Sometimes the most painful thing about Javascript programming is the lack of utility functions. I end up writing an awful lot of boilerplate.
jQuery -- my favorite Javascript library of all time -- goes a long way toward simplifying DOM-related tasks.
But why can't Javascript be more like PHP? Why can't it have a decent set of string and array manipulation functions?
It does now.... in the form of the php.js library. I haven't gotten to do any real testing of this library, but I read through the source code and am happy to see the beginnings of a library that might just encroach upon jQuery's top spot.
Drupal & JavaScript
