EDITED FOR CLARIFICATION
Before I say ANYTHING, please see How Classical Object-Oriented Programming Translates to Javascript. This is VERY important to understand. Now, that being said, I'll continue :)
Javascript has the unfortunate characteristic that you have to understand the run-time environment very well in order to make sense of why certain syntax is chosen over another that expresses the same thing (in theory). One of the main caveats of the run-time environment of javascript is that it is very easy to get things into the global space unintentionally. Here's two quick examples (these examples assume that you don't have any other code written):
/*
* Example 1
* This example uses 'object literal notation'.
* A link to an article about this is below the example.
* This example shows how easy it is to get into the global space just by
* not declaring variables properly.
*/
var myObj = {
myMethod: function() {
test = 'test'; // oops! now the variable test is in the global
// function space :(
// to avoid this, use var test = 'test'; to keep
// test in the scope of myMethod
}
};
Read about object literal notation.
/*
* Example 2
* This example shows how the infamous 'this' can be misused to accidentally
* get into the global space.
*/
var myConstructor = function() {
this.test = 'test';
};
var myObj1 = new myConstructor(); // 'this' will by 'myObj1'
var myObj2 = myConstructor(); // 'this' will by the global object :(
To see why Example 2 is true, see this.
One of the ways you avoid all of these headaches is by following good patterns that control access to the global scope. As some of the answers have pointed out, you can think of the StackExchange object as being used for namespacing purposes, but in reality, it's most often used to also avoid the problem listed in above example, as well prevent things such as name hoisting. In addition, you can make this 'namespacing' object also behave more like a traditional object from other classical OOP languages if you are intelligent in using closure scopes (taking advantage of the fact that all scopes in javascript are bound to functions, and functions in javascript are first-class data objects). Also, because the global space is so dangerous, it's best to "be a good DOM citizen" and only create one object in the global space that encapsulates all of your logic and data.
Joel and jeff are probably actually setting up closure scopes to do information hiding the javascript way. The below is just an example:
StackExchange = (function() { // give StackExchange it's own scope to prevent
// name hoisting and also to allow for private
// data
var version = '1.0.0'; // version only seen inside function scope
return { // return an object that will become 'StackExchange' and whose
// methods have access to this function's scope (closure)
debug: (function() {
// set up logging function that will be determined based on
// 'someCondition' (not defined in this code)
var loggingFn = (someCondition) : console.log ? alert;
return { // return obj with access to this function scope
log: function(strToLog) {
loggingFn.call(this, strToLog);
}
};
})(), // immediately execute to make object with 'debug' scope access
getVersion: function() {
return version; // this function has access to StackExchange
// scope; therefore, version will be available
}
};
})(); // immediately execute to make object with 'StackExchange' scope access
For more information, see name hoisting and scoping. Also, please read about Prototypical Inheritance in Javascript to understand patterns used to avoid global scoping problems.
