What does “use strict” do in JavaScript, and what is the reasoning behind it?

Question

Recently, I ran some of my JavaScript code through Crockford\'s JSLint, and it gave the following error:

Problem at line 1 character 1: Missing \"use

Answer 1

"use strict"; is the ECMA effort to make JavaScript a little bit more robust. It brings in JS an attempt to make it at least a little "strict" (other languages implement strict rules since the 90s). It actually "forces" JavaScript developers to follow some sort of coding best practices. Still, JavaScript is very fragile. There is no such thing as typed variables, typed methods, etc. I strongly recommend JavaScript developers to learn a more robust language such as Java or ActionScript3, and implement the same best practices in your JavaScript code, it will work better and be easier to debug.