Embrace the Complexity: Understanding Null and Undefined

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Null and undefined serve distinct purposes in JavaScript, with undefined representing missing values and functioning as a sentinel for absent elements in arrays. While undefined is considered a useful feature, null is seen as unnecessary, resulting from historical choices made by early developers. The desire to rectify the confusion between these two concepts is hindered by JavaScript's commitment to maintaining backward compatibility, especially given its integral role on the web. This reliance on existing programs prevents any definitive changes to the language, despite a strong inclination from some developers to address these inconsistencies and improve clarity.

Douglas Crockford is an American computer programmer who is involved in the development of the JavaScript language. He specified the JSON data format, and has developed various JavaScript related tools such as the static code analyzer JSLint. Crockford is also a game developer and worked at Atari.

Douglas joins the podcast to talk about his career and work in computer science.

Josh Goldberg is an independent full time open source developer in the TypeScript ecosystem. He works on projects that help developers write better TypeScript more easily, most notably on typescript-eslint: the tooling that enables ESLint and Prettier to run on TypeScript code. Josh regularly contributes to open source projects in the ecosystem such as ESLint and TypeScript. Josh is a Microsoft MVP for developer technologies and the author of the acclaimed Learning TypeScript (O’Reilly), a cherished resource for any developer seeking to learn TypeScript without any prior experience outside of JavaScript. Josh regularly presents talks and workshops at bootcamps, conferences, and meetups to share knowledge on TypeScript, static analysis, open source, and general frontend and web development.

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