[hayley]

I found out after far too much time, that a huge part of my personal success with a programming language is whether or not I "click" with its syntax. So my previous attempts at learning javascript failed miserably because I just never got over the syntax.

However, after getting into coffeescript (http://jashkenas.github.com/coffee-script/) I've actually started to enjoy doing javascript related programming.

So you might take a look and see if its syntax appeals to you. The big downside is that it assumes a prior knowledge of JS, so you'll still need other resources to really learn what's possible with JS/CS.

And my even more niche advice is that, for me, what really built up my momentum was to rewrite someone else's JS site in coffeescript. It's definitely a roundabout way of learning, but I basically got to learn coffeescript and javascript at the same time as I pored over this other person's code line by line as I rewrote it.

I don't know how common my syntax "hang-up" is, but if you do start looking at other languages, I would advise that you seek out sample programs so you can get familiar with what the syntax looks like. And then pick the language that makes the most sense to you even without any programming knowledge.