Particularly when it's good technology. Particularly when it's old, maligned, technology - like JavaScript!

JavaScript has been one of my favourite languages for just 'dipping into'. Not because I'm a web monkey, but because I'm a programmer. And most programmers have spent years maligning JavaScript and it's inability to anything useful, but I've been doing fun, interesting things with it for years.

That is, some programmers have maligned it. It seems many got burned with the idea of making dynamic web sites using it, but never got beyond page four of "Crap JavaScript for Muppets" and learnt nothing more than how to add two numbers together, only to find them concatenated as two equivalent strings would be. The never realised that JavaScript was an object-oriented language, with regular expressions, and a means to controller the browser dynamically. I bet the same programmers that beat me up for my lunch money in the playground are now emailing links to Google Maps of the schools where they tortured geeks like us for admitting to like JavaScript.

Now, however, we have Ajax, so JavaScript is becoming trendy again. At last! Perhaps I should dust of my CV and my "experimental code" folder to find some old code people might find useful :)

And even in typing that paragraph I've discovered something... this is the first time in ages I've been excited by the existence of a buzz word. Thanks to the word Ajax (not the technology - that's been around for ages), we're able to revisit technology now present in every browser, without downloading plugins, installing ActiveX controllers or making other hacks to the browser.