I prefer for loops because they have easier to read and debug exception stack traces. And typing for(i=;...) is calming for me.

I agree that the Array methods are extremely useful other than their ugly performance-sacrificing function scope. In this case though, when you need alternate behavior for the first index, it is much clearer to read a standard for loop with some precursor code behind it, than to read a forEach loop with an if-else.

Really? You find the above loop more readable than:

    if(array.length > 0) doFunction(array[0]);
    array.slice(1).forEach(doOtherFunction);

You're kind of cheating because you're using slice which will create a copy of the Array, and that's not cheap if the array is large.

People use arrays for things like queues and stacks all the time in JavaScript - they're _much_ slower than hand rolled collection (eg. http://jsperf.com/deque-vs-array-2 ) - why not micro optimize that as well?

If you have a very large array of course optimization can/should be considered but that's simply not the average case.

I actually like the slice code for it's ease of readability. Functional methods are extremely nice and I hope they get faster and faster with the optimization of JS JITs.

I never heard of Dequeue [1], that is mighty cool. I agree that premature optimization is not good - but when it can be done cleanly without hurt to the readability of the code, I'd say to keep it in ones' repertoire, to effectively write more performant code, more often, on average.

[1] http://code.stephenmorley.org/javascript/queues/

I see your point, but it's a bit of a stretch to call a style preference an anti-pattern. You even caveat it yourself in your stackoverflow response: "it's also a lot more readable (at least to me)".

Agreed on the hideousness of that 'instanceof Array' check.