I announced earlier this week <a href="http://blog.reybango.com/2010/11/29/jsmentors-com-the-mailing-list-to-learn-javascript-in-a-professional-and-courteous-environment/">about the launch of the JSMentors.com mailing list</a>. So far the response has been amazing. The list has grown from 344 on Nov 29 to 900+ today. Just phenomenal growth and a testament to the need of the list. But where did this idea come from?

I've been involved in the JavaScript community for some time, especially with the jQuery JavaScript library project. I've been fortunate to make a lot of friends who have helped me overcome many of the pitfalls and hurdles normally associated with becoming a JavaScript developer. As I began feeling more confident, I did what I feel most people do when they want to advance their skills to the next level and ventured over to <a href="http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.javascript/topics">comp.lang.javascript</a>. CLJ has a long history due to its roots in the newsgroup mediums which predated forums as the main method of communicating about many topics. I had heard that the developers there were top notch and you could find great content. To me, this was the obvious place to go. So I went. And I regretted it.

Everything people said was true. There are many incredibly smart and savvy JavaScript developers there; I would say some of the best in the world. 