1“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Arthur C. Clarke. Love that quote :)↩

2The ECMAScript standard in which JavaScript is based is evolved by the TC39 (Technical Committee 39) composed of several companies with strong interest in JavaScript (all major browser vendors) and distinguished members of the community. You can take a look at their GitHub page for a sneak-peek into how they work and what they are working in↩

Part I. Mastering the Arcane Art of JavaScript-mancy

1For those of you that are not fantasy nerds I have included a small glossary at the end of the book where you can check words that you find strange. You should be able to understand the book and examples without the glossary, but I think it’ll be more fun if you do↩

2This is a gross oversimplification. If you’ve read some traditional literature about static vs dynamic programming languages you’ll be familiar with the idea that static programming languages like C++, Java, C# are compiled and then executed whereas dynamic programming languages like Ruby, Python or JavaScript are not compiled but interpreted on-the-fly as they are executed. The repercussions of this being that a compiled program cannot be changed at runtime (you would need to recompile it), whereas an interpreted one can, since nothing is set in stone until it is run. In today’s world however, JavaScript runtimes like V8 (Chrome) or SpiderMonkey (Mozilla) compile JavaScript to machine code, optimize it, and re-optimize it based on heuristics on how the code is executed.↩

3For those of you not familiar with magic, mana can be seen as a measure of magical stamina. As such, doing magic (like summoning minions) spends one’s mana. An empty reservoir of mana means no spellcasting just as a empty reserve of stamina means no more running.↩

4As an article of interest you can augment objects in C# if you use the dynamic keyword with ExpandoObjects↩

5One does not simply change the prototype of an object willy-nilly at runtime since it can affect performance a lot. Instead, you would use Object.create or a function constructor, and if needed, you would augment the prototype as needed.↩

6like a hobbit but with shoes. If curious look up the joyful, corageous and beloved Tasslehoff Burrfoot.↩

7in reality, it does not need to be an array, but an iterable that produces key/value pairs [<key>:<value>]↩

8for the sake of correctness, you can use the for/of loop not only on arrays, maps and sets but on anything that implements the iterable protocol. We will discuss iterability later within the book.↩