Much of programming language design is dictated by fashion. As a consequence, opinions about programming languages tend to be strong, shallow, and deeply emotional. The best languages are brilliant and sadly unfashionable. But we love our stylish, over-rated syntax, and this talk presents an amazing parsing technique that helps achieve it.
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Douglas Crockford was born in the wilds of Minnesota, but left when he was only six months old because it was just too damn cold. He turned his back on a promising career in television when he discovered computers. He has worked in learning systems, small business systems, office automation, games, interactive music, multimedia, location-based entertainment, social systems, and programming languages.
He is the inventor of Tilton, the ugliest programming language that was not specifically designed to be an ugly programming language. He is best known for having discovered that there are good parts in JavaScript. This was an important and unexpected discovery. He discovered the JSON Data Interchange Format. He is currently working on making the web a secure and reliable software delivery platform. He has his work cut out for him.
Links:
Blog: crockford.com
JSON.org
JSLint.com
ADsafe.org