Oh, JavaScript, I remember when you were but a little baby.  Remember how you used  keep us all up at night with your pop-up errors in Internet Explorer 4 for each missing semicolon.

Remember how your most used event was “onclick”?  And that the most used action was “window.open”?

Remember how people looked down upon you as an inferior language?  “You mean I need to write JavaScript too on the client?  What’s wrong with ASP on the server?”

And then, you started to grow right before our eyes.  Remember the first time we saw you in Google Maps?  How the heck can you just keep scrolling the map without clicking buttons to update the whole page, we thought.  What magic is this?

And it was you, humble little JavaScript.  Growing up quickly.

Soon, you proved you were no little inferior language.  You picked up some nicknames, like ajax.  And you became part of big fancy projects, like Prototype.

And all of sudden, people wanted you to work with them instead of cursing you as a mere infant.  You became the shiny new kid in town.  “You mean your app doesn’t use ajax?” they would say if you weren’t around.  “That means you’re not web 2.0!”

Now I can’t go anywhere without bumping into you.  All the cool kids want to play with you.  Node.js, jQuery, Backbone, they all come calling for you.  Hell, big daddy Google would probably be lost without you.

Sometimes I miss the good ole days: frames, blinking ads, and pop-up windows.  But mostly I’m glad you are grown up.  Just don’t forget to call home every once in a while and say hi.