JavaScript: The Way Of The Future

JavaScript has been around for ages, but it's coming into it's own with powerful, highly productive tools. The latest generation browsers, ECMAScript5, HTML5/CSS3, PhoneGap and Titanium, WebOS, node.js (on the JVM I'd rather program rhino or ringo than groovy), and an enormous number of excellent supporting libraries.

Thomas Fuchs has blogged that we should help make JavaScript documentation better and I rather agree. He also suggests blogging about JavaScript particularly about topics that make it easy for new JavaScript programmers to pick up skills quickly.

So I will! But what topics should I include?

• Testability and TDD of JavaScript is important to me.
  
• The separation of business logic and DOM access.
  
• Functional programming style, and how it simplifies things.
  
• Learning with server-side JavaScript to improve client-side code.
  
• Explaining some odd stylistic idioms, (such as single var, or bracketed immediate function definition and call).
  

Yesterday I put together a lightning talk of some non-beginner techniques. But they might make good topics as well. Sometimes getting your head around a few tricky problems can make the less complex stuff much easier. Running a few miles each day and getting up the stairs will be much easier.