I feel that JavaScript is an essential part of a modern website. I remember the days when we were always concerned about how the experience was for our visitors who didn't have JavaScript enabled, but now we all feel that it's up to the visitor to have up-to-date technology to have a good experience on the web.  The web browsers have followed suit - be current or be left behind.

The first time I really dove into the technology was many years ago when I was tasked with making a simple game that tested visitors with their ability to key in numbers really quickly on the number pad. The fastest keyboarder was awarded with a $100 gift card, and bragging rights on our leaderboard. I was really amazed by how simple it was to make the web truly interactive (yes, this was a long time ago). I drew a calculator on the screen and started throwing random numbers out for the guest to key in as quickly as possible. At the end, they'd see their ranking and hope that they achieved the #1 spot. Quite an achievement for my first go at JavaScript, with the support of Perl to store the player data.

Today I don't seem to use plain, traditional JavaScript very often. When I first started using it, I had in mind that some sort of function library would have been beneficial to take care of tasks that were common, such as fading objects out, refreshing pages, setting timers, and the myriad other tasks that have been completely simplified by jQuery. Let someone else worry about cross-browser support for a change! The jQuery function library has been a godsend to those of us who spent hours writing JavaScript over the years.  It's over - yay.

The newest JavaScript-based library that I've learned is React.  With this technology, you can manipulate areas of your page without the need for another page load.  It's very powerful indeed, and I'm looking forward to working with it more.