so javascript is becoming probably the most portable language ever! * Browsers (all of them!) * Java VM * .Net * Windows scripting * infopath * Ajax * Rails

Interesting! Learning javascript nowadays is definitely a good time investment.

I still wonder if the google ppl ever checked helma http://dev.helma.org/

yeah its a decent language. even has a formal specification and all ! Plus there are many increasingly tight implementations of engines for it (webkit, firefox, adobe, rhino, ... etc). So people are getting real good at optimising it for the platform it runs on.

We could do worse then JS being the "next big language" as steve likes to put it.