An exacta box with JavaScript would have paid phat money. D’oh.
Last night over at the Jeff Atwood’s blog he posted a really good article about Javascript. It reminded of a basketball game I played in probably 8 or 9 years ago now. (Brace for tangent in 5.. 4.. 3.. 2.. 1..)
At my previous job, back in the high times of the dot-com boom, one of the best perks was the daily lunchtime basketball games. Before the start of one of those games, a senior architect asked me what I thought the next big thing was going to be. I’m thinking he was looking for an outside opinion of someone not too long out of college. Maybe someone with an eye on the cutting edge. Most likely he was just being polite.
Regardless, my initial answer was the inspired, “Hmm, I really don’t know.” He was curious if things like handheld devices were going to be where the action was. I remember thinking about how much I didn’t use the Palm IIIx I had bought and figured that that was probably not going to be it. To be honest I’m not sure what answer I eventually gave him, it was probably something hand-wavy about the web or the internet.
Just between us, let’s pretend I laid out the future design for Digg or YouTube.
Anyhow, I do remember at the time thinking that never in a million bazillion years would Javascript take off. I fully expected it to get seated at the same table with a bunch of other failed technologies. And not a good table, but a really crappy one. Like one that is right in front of the DJ at a wedding reception so when you leave all you can hear is the Electric Slide ringing in your ears.
Man, did I back the wrong horse on that one. That JavaScript (or ECMAScript as his mother calls him) is darn near everywhere.
Oh well, live and learn I guess. At least I was right about Digg and YouTube though. 
It might have died if wasn’t for Microsoft’s XMLHttpRequest object in IE. Their own object could be their demise.
That is pretty ironic. Kind of like what Alanis said: An old man turned ninety-eight, He won the lottery and died the next day. Wait, that’s not ironic, that just sucks.