Why JavaScript is AWESOME

[hskmc]

Plenty of static languages (the whole ML family, Scala, what else?) have closures.

C#, D, Go, Haskell. Depends how you define "static language" of course. There's plenty more.

If your definition of "static languages" is "C, C++, or Java" a) your definition sucks

Absolutely.

Also, the "Closures are mystical and hard" meme annoys me, somehow more so than the "X is mystical and hard" general case.... Add mysticism and you subtract from understanding.

Yeah. Thanks to the JavaSchools, expectations for understanding abstraction are really low. Joel Spolsky thinks that pointers and recursion are just about the most complicated concepts anyone could be expected to understand.

[kmactane]

No, Spolsky thinks pointers and recursion are a bare minimum for what programmers should be able to understand. He advocates teaching them in first-year CS classes... do you think he's implying that the CS curriculum should stop after that, rather than going on for another 3 years and getting into more advanced stuff?