If you are a Web developer, you should check out Brendan Eich’s Strange Loop presentation on The State of JavaScript. JavaScript was supposed to be my 2011 skill of the year, but I really didn’t make any progress toward that goal and wound up learning other things instead. This year I’ve learned a ton of things, but not much JavaScript. In the meantime, JavaScript has become an even more essential skill for developers. As it turns out, I have managed to learn a fair amount of Scala and Hadoop since I wrote that post, and I’m learning Python right now as well. Maybe in 2013 I’ll get back to JavaScript.