JavaScript is a dynamic, object-oriented scripting language available in almost every web browser. The ActionScript language used in Adobe Flash is very similar to JavaScript: both are defined by the ECMAScript language standard.
JavaScript is the reason why people use silly buzzwords like "Web 2.0"
Needless to say, there's a lot of shady JavaScript code out there (generating and evaling strings all over the place...). But it's also a fairly capable higher-order functional language, and offers you the ability to add many useful abstractions not in the base language.
The purpose of this presentation is to help you understand JavaScript, and hopefully, how to write good programs in JavaScript.
Sameer Sundresh is a Ph.D. student in computer science at the University of Illinois. In graduate school, I initially worked on sensor networks, but later became interested in programming languages that make it easier to design usable, understandable systems. I'm planning on graduating in the spring, and I don't know what I'll do after that.
Most importantly, I am not a long-time JavaScript expert. A year ago, all I knew was JavaScript looked kind of like C, and had some features kind of like Scheme. Everything I am presenting today I learned during the past year while consulting part-time for a source code data mining startup called Pattern Insight.