Recommended: “Google Closure: How not to write JavaScript”

SitePoint’s Kevin Yank brings us some serious criticism of Google Closure from Dmitry Baranovskiy, creator of the Raphaël and gRaphaël JavaScript libraries. From the post:

Having delivered a talk on how to write your own JavaScript library (detailed notes) at the conference, Dmitry shared his thoughts on the new library over breakfast the next morning. “Just what the world needs—another sucky JavaScript library,” he said. When I asked him what made it ‘sucky’, he elaborated. “It’s a JavaScript library written by Java developers who clearly don’t get JavaScript.”

For the rest of the day, to anyone who would listen, Dmitry cited example after example of the terrible code he had found when he went digging through Closure. His biggest fear, he told me, was that people would switch from truly excellent JavaScript libraries like jQuery to Closure on the strength of the Google name.

The post continues with examples of how Google gets it wrong with Closure. But as importantly, they’re excellent tips and tricks that every web developer can use to produce faster, better JavaScript.