[mpf62]

I would recommend learning JavaScript. Java, VB, PHP, etc. are pretty much all the same in comparison to JavaScript. I’m not talking about syntax or patterns but about general purpose. In my opinion, JavaScript is the most important complementary technology to the - what I call them - backend languages.

Today, web-enabling almost always is a requirement. People usually want access to their applications with their iphone and in the worst case (the battery just exploded, notebook lost, etc.) from a cybercafé.

Sure, you can web-enable most (business) applications with pure HTML/CSS. But if you take advantage of the power of AJAX (XMLHttpRequest), you can build GUIs with such high performance that it feels (almost) like a regular desktop application and therefore people often don’t even care about installing the available client-application on their office computers. People love it if they don’t have to install anything at all.

I would start with something like that: Imagine you’re abroad and your notebook just fell down the stairs - it’s broken. What would you like to have access to in that situation from a cybercafé. Maybe an address book? Now imagine, that the cybercafé you are into has an awfully slow connection and they charge you a fortune for every single byte that travels their connection. So, your address book should be fast as lightning, means: nothing similar should go over the wire more than once (search box, headers of your address list, pagination elements, etc.). There's nothing that can beat JavaScript in solving this problem.

[Tichy]

I think JavaScript will become a good option for the server, too (or already is so). Furthermore, lots of things can be scripted with JavaScript, including Photoshop. Although a couple of years agao I was warned against scripting PS with JS, so I am not sure.