O'Reilly's Velocity event is all about making the web go faster and so it is of interest to all of us. Of particular interest however is Douglas Crockford on measuring how fast JavaScript goes - and did you know it was the most popular language in the world?

O'Reilly's Velocity event is all about making the web go faster and so it is of interest to all of us.

The Velocity conference is over for another year and there is a collection of slides and videos for you to view at: Velocity Slides and Videos

Perhaps the star of the show is Douglas Crockford who comes out and says things right at the very start that previously would have been greeted with ridicule:

"Anyone heard of JavaScript? Turns out it's the world's most popular language."

and

"It's an amalgam of features from several other languages - from Java it gets its lousy syntax, from Scheme it gets functions as first class objects - the best idea in the history of programming languages - and from Self it gets prototypal inheritance - the other greatest idea."

If this opening doesn't make you want to hear about JavaScript and its performance then nothing will! There are lies, damned lies, and benchmarks. Tuning language processor performance to benchmarks can have the unintended consequence of encouraging bad programming practices. This is the true story of developing a new benchmark with the intention of encouraging good practices.

Don't forget that there are other videos, slides and notes at the Velocity website: Velocity Slides and Videos

More Information

Which JavaScript is fastest?