JavaScript is /way/ better than good enough. It's terrific. It's the only programming language many people need to produce really amazing websites and web application that make the world a richer and more promising place for a lot of people.

It's good enough to get you $40-50/hr easily.

It's good enough to build platforms and APIs and tons of libraries given freely to the community by companies including Yahoo, Google, and startups you've never heard of.

It's a beautiful language and /extremely/ powerful. To judge it poorly because hash keys are strings is so short sighted that I doubt the credibility of the author.

If you are new to programming or want to try something out, go for JavaScript. You can build a simple website in HTML and if you know JavaScript, you can plug into a wealth of information just by typing some code into a browser window and hitting save.

Look at what any of the major mapping websites let you do. Entire platforms as a service. And now with the Pre out, you'll be able to build websites with javascript that function natively on the phone. The iPhone makes you jump through hoops to do something like that.

JavaScript is big big big and it doesn't have anything to do with hash keys. It has to do with a network of like-minded individuals pushing it forward. Not for money, not to make it easier, not to win control, but to create a platform on which we can all collaborate and build an Internet that helps us communicate.

Look at the power right here on Hacker News. The arrows, when you click them, the page doesn't refresh, it just sends a quick little request back to the server and the arrow goes away and ur done, no waiting, no pauses.

Now, that is, technically a RIA, or an AJAX site. Now, if you want to get all technical about it, it's not even AJAX because the X isn't there. In that way, Hacker News is more of an AJ site. Anyway, this isn't my point...

My point is, it's all HTML and just a few clever little lines of JavaScript and you have a very functional system that works in any browser that supports Javascript and if it doesn't support javascript, it still works and that's amazing. It's like JavaScript is so simple to add so much functionality and speed to a site and a life.

I don't even know why the author went all into Action Script, what does that have to do with JavaScript? Because Action Script does hash keys the way he likes it is awesome and JavaScript is just good enough?

No way I say! I love JavaScript. It's an Internet Standard. Don't discredit the value of that. Standards bodies like that don't just go around choosing all willy-nilly, they think about the decision long and hard and they make a good one and JavaScript is a good one and it'll do everything we need for a very very long time.

And everyone wants it to stay that way. Everyone's also trying to fill in its gaps and make some hard things easier and that'll always be expected and that's great, but the author didn't compare it to Silverlight and didn't compare it to Java Fx and all the other RIA platforms, only ActionScript and ...

You know what, look at this other post: http://alarmingdevelopment.org/?p=66 Where in 2007, the same author says, "People are finally realizing that HTML is incapable of supporting a sophisticated user interface. AJAX is a reeking pile of hacks and cluges that offers only a glimpse of what could be possible with a halfway-intelligent browser platform."

A lot of really cool stuff is done in Flash. A lot of really nice things are done with JavaScript too and I think those kinds of statements are outlandish. JavaScript/AJAX, whatever you want to call it have problems and frustrations and so does Flash. To mention one or a couple reasons where one excels over the other misses the big picture.

The big picture is that JavaScript is what the community has chosen. The community of the expert people for everyone that is good and JavaScript is that and it probably will be for a long time.

I feel like, and when I say "feel like" I mean my gut, without numbers to back it up, tells me that JavaScript is super powerful and widely supported by a lot of people for a very good reason. Why don't the flash people stop with the action script and start using JavaScript?

Is it because someone is going to have to change? All the people who like Action Script are going to have to learn JavaScript? Or are the Action Script people expecting all the JavaScript people to give up JavaScript and learn Action Script?

There's a very backed in a corner feel to all of the posts. Like some sort of weird undertone I can't quite put my finger on, but I don't think I agree much with what the author has to say.