Lately, I’ve been re-learning Javascript.

Back then in 2004, I used to use Javascript for doing some DHTML stuff (popups, DOM manipulation, …). Nowadays, people start using JavaScript in more structure way to avoid spaghetti code. So I learn how to use some MVC frameworks (like backbone.js or ember.js) and also make myself familiar with JQuery.

Here are some wip learning projects on my GitHub:

• backbone-cellar: Forked from Coenraet’s Backbone tutorial. I implement Node.JS for the backend support.
• Alaycator, a simple bookmarklet for converting any website into alay, some kind of Indonesian leetspeak which is popular among teenies 😀
• todotodo-bootstrap: A simple todo list webapp using Backbone, Require.JS, and Twitter Bootstrap for the UI. Supports mobile and desktop, and stores the data on local database. Contains simple Node.JS script for testing on webserver. I plan to make the JQuery Mobile version of this, stay tuned!

I still think that ActionScript, as a language, is still much better than JavaScript. But the thing is, ever since HTML5 got its hype, JavaScript  has gained LOTS of momentum. People get really excited about it and build amazing things using JavaScript, even on server side.

There are lots of open source projects; people trying to contribute for making better tools or libraries, and all of these grow so fast. Even some Adobe Flex evangelists start promoting JavaScript and HTML5.

At certain point, unless Adobe do something, JavaScript will catchup and will be able to do anything that Flash can do. Hey, maybe that’s not a bad thing 😉

I believe Flash will not be dead soon and will focus more on what its best: High performance and rich multimedia web/mobile app, including games. I’m not saying that all of these things cannot be done by JavaScript but right now, I still think Flash performance is still the best.

If you want to learn JavaScript the ‘modern’ way, here are some suggestions:

• Douglas Crockford’s JavaScript: The Good Parts. This is a must read! I find this book helps me to switch my mindset to JavaScript specific things like object/prototype, function closure, the bad parts, and also tips & tricks to avoid the bad parts which make your code more structured 😉
• Addy Osmani’s Essential JavaScript Design Pattern. This book is available for free on his GitHub project. This book give some examples how to build more modular and structured JavaScript development.
• Addy Osmani’s Backbone Fundamentals. Another free book from Addy Osmani, if you want to develop structured, large, and scalable webapp using Backbone.