JS alone will get you nowhere. JS is part of todays web ecosystem. And developing for the web today is so hard, people doing it are either inexperienced and naive or - like me - sort-of specialized/focused in some vertical toolstack like LAMP + Wordpress + Bootstrap or something and never really happy with their results.

The problem is, that you have to know HTML5, CSS3, DOM perhaps some jQuery UI or HTML canvas stuff + UX + responsice webdesign + Typography & Layout + a workable set of backend tools (LAMP or such) to do anything usefull with JS. Which makes the whole thing basically impossible for an "entry level" developer to learn.

I suggest you find a team that has a working development pipeline, uses versioning (far to many webshops don't) and puts out good results and learn by doing.

As for JS in general - there's a lot of academic ragging on JS here, but most of it misses the point about JS entirely:
JS alone is like a mix of Python and Ruby made to look like Java (yeah, I know) and doesn't look very modern. However, what makes JS interesting is the fact that as a platform it is available basically anywhere. JS is todays PC of platforms. A toy, not taken seriously by anyone, but available for cheap/free everywhere. Which is why it is going to win in the long run, just like the toy-technology x86 did, eventually squishing every other architecture like a bug on it's way to total world dominance. In the early eighties, people would've laughed you out of the room for predicting that.

I personally wouldn't be suprised if JS eventually replaces PHP, Java and Co. on the serverside and takes over everything but system development on the clientside within the next decade or two. Be it natively or with languages that cross-compile to JS ... We already have a ton of those. Google is heading for bringing the second half of humanity online, and as far as I can tell, they're succeeding. Which in itself does put JS in a future-safe position.

JS, Browsers and the clientside webstack are a mess, but they are truely cross-platform, open and not controlled by a single entity. Very much like x86.

So no matter what you're doing, getting into JS at a professional level one way or the other isn't the worst thing to do.

My 2 cents.

It's not just in the U.S.A.

In Canada we've just had a verdict in a supposedly homegrown terrorism case (do a search for the names Nuttal and Korody), but it's clear that the defendants only have a handful of brain cells between them (heroin will do that...), and the undercover cops had a major part in turning a couple of harmless losers who aren't quite sure what day it is in to a major threat to national security. Needless to say, their lawyer is going for entrapment.

Also needless to say, the media are going entirely with the government/party line...

...laura

If I catch a robot handling my book like shown in the video I'm gonna wreck it and sell it for scrap.
Or mod it into my personal coffee machine.

That doing something for the money is the wrong reason and that doing something that combines your passion and an income is the better option, even if you initially earn less. I did a career switch from teaching performing arts to spoiled brats who often couldn't appreciate and went into FOSS-centric web-development at the turn of the millenium. I came on board just in time for the crash, but I never regretted it. Staying in my "real" profession with the only realistic occupation would've killed me. Or brought me into a mental health asylum.

I would go back to performing arts on the spot. As a performer and/or choreograph with the right crew and the right amount of funding. But not as a so-so paid overworked excuse for a nanny for spoiled kids of the wealthy who have no idea what life is like in the real world and are too spoiled to appreciate good art. The best students I had were those who came in from middle to low income families - they felt like they had stepped into paradise. Which the school basically was. And the appreciated it and behaved accordingly. Those I still remember with warm thoughts. The others I sometimes sort of hate, hoping they ran into some serious lesson somewhere on the way into adulthood.

It was roughly three years into teaching that I noticed I never wanted to become a teacher in that field, that I wanted to perform and that there was no money in performing. I left that field, went into IT and never turned back. Being your Type A 80ies computer kid and RPG nerd did help with that.

I'm getting by as an experienced part time webdev, consultant and software architect and fiddle with FOSS technologies on the side when I'm not out dancing. Feels great.

Any newcomer should consider switching job and hobby if things turn out to be a drag - it's what I did and it worked great for me.

My 2 cents.

Imagine your garments being woven and sewn entirely by machines! Imagine if all the farmers would be replaced by machines that sow and harvest everything - there would be rampage, murder, rage, and death! Humanity would end! OMG, we're all doomed! ... Errrmh, ...
Ok, scratch that. Never mind.

Machines taking over the dirty work. Awesome.
More time for me to dance tango, do yoga and live to become 120 years old.

Sorry, folks, but I'm welcoming the new robot army with open arms. No excuse me while I continue my job as a webdev, clicking together Wordpress apps and doing the type of work that would've needed a team of seven 10 years ago.

Rather spending that type of money on the bazillions pointless DOD contract where it doens't trickle down but simply trickles away, it goes to a guy and his various crews that actually get shit done. And manufactures mostly domestically. I don't see a problem here.

Earth can support 30+ billion people easyly. Three times the earths population would fit into the US, with room to spare and more than enough room for agriculture to feed them all. The problem - as usual - is management of society, of natural resources and wealth disparity. We are at a point where it is more feasible for all of us to hand out solar panels, food, transport and shelter to the poor for free rather than have them chop down the remainder of trees in order to burn them to cook and heat.

Imagine earth being managed / gouverned by a team of smart people, such as the exec teams of Google or Apple - that would be a totally different thing and we'd probably all be way better of than now.

As for the procreation: We'd have to start thinking outside of heritage and percieve all children as children of everyone. At the same time first world people are losing interest in having children. We need to spread wealth and education in such a way that the birth rate goes down. Combine that with the management mentioned above plus perhaps some unfied space travel efforts and we have a bright new utopia ahead of us. If we then manage to reach 50 billion and the place is getting crowded, we can than think about who gets to take the suicide pill.

Sadly, somehow I think this is not going to happen too soon. :-(

Shit like this are the artefacts from the steam age of computing.
As a web guy I deal with this every day. If I ever get around to building an OS and/plattform (Harhar) I'll force one text format and one only for all glyphs in existance (UTF seems like a good candidate).
Controll characters will be completely seperate.

The perfect presentation slide is blank. Because I am giving the presentation, and I expect people to listen to what I have to say.

...laura

Women want to have babies.
Men want to have sex.

If all things go right, women get a man who not only does the 5-minute job but also is a provider.
If all goes well for the man, he gets good sex regularly.

That's a broad simplification, but that's what it boils down to on an evolutionary scale.
It is this that determines our behaviour on a broad range, at least with the majority which are heterosexuals.

I see it every weekend when I go out Tango dancing - saw again and everywhere just this pentecost weekend on a Tango retreat in fact. Career power women who earn thrice my paygrade dressing up all girly-like and melting away in those awesome dance-teachers arms (meh!) or in mine (huzaaa!) when the best where taken. Me, an insecure geek/nerd with social issues going all manly and cool and feeling like a god, embracing women so beautyful you wouldn't believe it. It's a formalised environment where I can't go too wrong if I follow the rules.

Don't get me wrong, a huge part of the way things are is a grown culture that could use some fixing, but the essence is pretty much evolutionary biology at work. I wouldn't say it's all that bad and I wouldn't say it's a disaster if my daughter doesn't go into tech.

I would love to see it, but I won't force her.