Break all the rules

Good programmers follow best practices; great programmers investigate them.

Many JavaScript sources proclaim (with miraculous certainty) that some tricky language features are anti-patterns that must be avoided at all costs, while offering little or nothing in the way of substantive evidence beyond alarmist warnings or references to their favorite gurus. We shouldn’t ask people to follow rules that we can’t explain or propose actions that we can’t defend.

This talk will demonstrate that, whether its double-equals coercion, iteration without hasOwnProperty, augmenting native prototypes or even fraternizing with the evil ‘eval’ and ‘with’, there is a time and place for virtually every feature of JavaScript and taking the time to study and understand their potential will enrich the programming experience, just as a broader vocabulary enriches the speaking experience. The talk will feature copius real life examples drawn from respected libaries and tools.