Welcome to the thirty-sixth issue of De Programmatica Ipsum, closing our third year of publication, and dedicated to the subject of Innovation. In this edition, Adrian discusses Microsoft's de facto monopoly of innovation around JavaScript; Graham studies the causes and effects of the fascination around the concept of innovation; and in the Library section, Adrian dissects the good parts of Douglas Crockford's "JavaScript: The Good Parts".
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InnovationScript
If there is one galaxy in the software development universe that has suffered from the relentless, unstoppable, frantic, and unbearable pace of innovation, that one is, undoubtedly, JavaScript.
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Innovation To What End?
This fascination society has with innovation is a funny thing. There is no need for it, and yet here we are. Always be disrupting. Move fast and break things.
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Douglas Crockford
O'Reilly published in 2020 the seventh edition of one of the biggest bestseller programming books of the past 25 years, Flanagan's "JavaScript: The Definitive Guide". At 700 pages and weighing 1.2 kg, it is a book that easily stands out in any good programmer's library. Many developers have used such information to joke about the fact that the good parts of JavaScript, as catalogued by Crockford in his eponymous 2008 book, is merely 180 pages long, and weights only 290 grams; that is, only 25% of JavaScript is actually any good.
