For years I’ve managed to dodge learning JavaScript. People have told me it’s a fine language with some dodge implementations. Friends have built an entire business model in the language, and I’ve continued to treat as if it were The Sound of Music (I’m 39 now and I have managed to completely avoid watching that film).

Except, today I finally had a technical need that I couldn’t dodge by writing another .rjs file, so with the help of the Prototype docs, a helpful article or two and healthy dose of cribbing from others, I was off.

What do you know, it really is a fine language. I doubt I’m writing idiomatic code though - I’m leaning heavily on closures and private member functions, and I haven’t written a single for loop yet, but it seems to accommodate my style.

Now, if I can just get my head round the innards of keyboard events I shall be a great deal happier.