Head First JavaScript Programming

Chapter 5. A trip to Objectville

Understanding Objects

So far you’ve been using primitives and arrays in your code. And, you’ve approached coding in quite a procedural manner using simple statements, conditionals and for/while loops with functions—that’s not exactly object-oriented. In fact, it’s not object-oriented at all! We did use a few objects here and there without really knowing it, but you haven’t written any of your own objects yet. Well, the time has come to leave this boring procedural town behind to create some objects of your own. In this chapter, you’re going to find out why using objects is going to make your life so much better—well, better in a programming sense (we can’t really help you with your fashion sense and your JavaScript skills all in one book). Just a warning: once you’ve discovered objects you’ll never want to come back. Send us a postcard when you get there.

Did someone say “Objects”?!

Ah, our favorite topic! Objects are going to take your JavaScript programming skills to the next level—they’re the key to managing complex code, to understanding the browser’s document model (which we’ll do in the next chapter), to organizing your data, and they’re even the fundamental way many JavaScript libraries are packaged up (more on that much later in the book). That said, objects are a difficult topic, right? Hah! We’re going ...