A few years ago, I remember complaining that Javascript is a lost art. I was working with a .Net offshore team who claimed not to know HTML or Javascript—they only knew Asp.Net. When we were trying to come up with solutions to a particular web problem, I recommended we use Ajax. They didn’t know any ajax outside of the Microsoft Ajax extensions.
I did a lot of Javascript back in the day. I can remember sitting down on a Saturday night in 1999 reading through a giant copy of the “Javascript Bible”. Before ajax was mainstream, you used to have to know how to store data islands in your source and store all kinds of arrays locally. The sites I did work on where Javascript was heavily used were cumbersome and difficult to maintain. They usually supported only IE.
Anyone who has ever worked with me knows how much I hate Asp.net web forms. I prefer classic ASP to webforms. I admire PHP developers who had full control over their html and javascript.
But now . . . Javascript is back.
When Silverlight was dropped in favour of HTML5, I moaned. I remember the bad old days of trying to write to the lowest common denominator in browsers. I don’t want to go back to that. I’m happy to stay in the Silverlight haven. They supported Macs at least, but not Lynux or tablets.
But in the past few months, I’ve been able to use Javascript to write games (Impact JS), phone apps (jQuery Mobile and Phone Gap(, and server applications (node.js).
Javascript is better than I ever remember it being. It seems to be experiencing a renaissance. While all the coders of other languages are having pointless arguments about which one is better, Javascript is proving the be the uniter. Learn JS, and you can do anything.
These are exciting times. Right now, everyone seems to have a Javascript framework. There are so many to choose from.
Javascript is beautiful. And no one is trying to control it.
I’m really looking forward to the next year. I’m sold. HTML5 is the way of the future.
