Don't get me wrong, I agree that JavaScript is a very nice scripting language saddled by some very stupid API decisions. I freaking hate the W3C DOM, although that's not JavaScript's fault.argonaut05 said:My original point, however, was that JS is a lot more useful and powerful than an HTML plug-in used by kindergarden kids. That's turtle. We use a lot of JS in our company's enterprise level applications, where it buddies up nicely with our C++/C# code and in many cases is desirable because it allows us to deploy quickly.
Some of the newer JavaScript things like XMLHttpRequest are actually really kind of cool and would be elegantly designed if Microsoft ever got over their magic number syndrome. (readyState == 4 means what, exactly?)
I actually think JavaScript makes a very good language to start learning on. Unfortunately thanks to the various different interpretations of the "standard web APIs" that each browser implements, it makes it a very difficult language to actually learn because even though things "work" when it comes to the JavaScript data model, they don't work due to broken implementations.