Grow Up.

No, really. It's not just you'll be a 16 year old JavaScript hack. The JavaScript world is tiny. So is the whole HTML / XML / Java applets / Web services world. Not that you can't spend your entire life there (and have the appropriate amount of fun). It's just you need some perspective.

Things were being done with computers before the first httpd was run. A great deal of them were very clever. Most of them are still relevant today, if you know of them, if you know enough of their background to appreciate them, and if you know enough of the fields they came from to understand them.

When I was a wee lad, "everybody" was mucking around with home computers. 16 bit machines were just around the corner. They were going to crush the minicomputers; VMS was slowly but steadily extinguishing UNIX. Oh, and the future of professional programming was in Ada.

So how come so many of us old 8 bitters are "still" (after nigh on 20 years) computing? It's not our ninja-like skillz with BASIC which kept us here. It's not zealous study of 6502 and Z80 (and 8080/8085) opcodes. Those are irrelevant today. But the principles behind them aren't. You want to understand the principles, and apply them on JavaScript or whatever the flavour du jour is.

So don't stick just to Javascript and the rest of the Web. It isn't all there. Educate yourself. Learn about other fields of computing and Computer Science. Give yourself a broad base. Learn several different programming languages. At least one of C, C++ and Java, maybe Perl, Python or Ruby, and at least one "crazy" language: OCaml, Haskell, Forth or the like.

Who knows? You might find something else you like doing. Or you might decide that the Web really is the best. But at least you'll know enough to bring new ideas to your field. You'll have an easier time seeing others' new ideas in their context (and seeing if they're really new!).

Knowledge is Power (no, really).