Does the Future Belong to Javascript?

I’ve been saying for a couple of years now that Javascript has a good chance of displacing Perl, Python, Ruby, and other scripting languages over the next two or three years: it has all their advantages, plus developers have to learn it to write modern applications. Apple’s announcement that third-party development for the iPhone will be Web 2.0-ish—i.e., HTML and Javascript on the client side—is just another nudge in this direction. Kids, if you want to be on the leading edge in 2010, there are worse bets to make than becoming a Javascript guru now.