I definitely do not consider myself great JavaScript developer. Not even mediocre. Code by some people that now do JavaScript lectures, I've refactored and made

I definitely do not consider myself great JavaScript developer. Not even mediocre. Code by some people that now do JavaScript lectures, I've refactored and made at least order of magnitude faster, so there's that. There's one important thing I've already learned though and I'll do you a solid - be a total nazi to your code.[1] At the start, it's easy to get impression that it's all loosey-goosey-everything-works kinda thing, and it actually is...at small scale! When you get to medium-sized thing, all hell starts to break loose, and I'm not talking just callback hell. You can avoid all that with modest amount of discipline. I'm aware many people have qualms with JSLint, some even with JSHint. But it doesn't matter what you use as long as you keep consistency. Those two tools help you with that. If you can be disciplined without it, sure, go for it. Just reading on possible configuration options for JSHint already made me consider many potential pitfalls I wouldn't have even thought of otherwise.. As far as learning goes, I'm definitely recommending learning as-you-go. To hell with academics - this is JavaScript, language made in few weeks[2]. You can develop amazingly accurate feel for the language in spite of not knowing rigorous abstracts. You're not sure what new actually does, and you're on deadline? Make a note - "figure out new" - and move along. When you manage to scrounge few hours of your busy week, run through those questions of yours across plethora of amazing resources online, head over to #Node.js or ##javascript on freenode, ask and ye shall receive. In JavaScript, there's about a million ways one can make something work, an immense solution space. Are you sure your attack vector is good enough? Refactor aggresively! [1] I wanted to go with "anal" instead of "nazi". But you get the idea. [2] ...by some amazing dude though.