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I was in Douglas Crockford's JavaScript talk at The Ajax Experience and he said something that resonated a lot.

As a youthful journeyman programmer he used to learn every feature of a language/platform and tried to use everyone on a daily basis.

Now he has a subset of features that he relies on, and he sticks to those.

I have found myself doing the same thing. It makes learning new languages and platforms a lot easier too, as I do not feel the pressure to learn every nuance on day one.

Did I really need to learn about "class <<self;" on day one of Rubyland to be productive in Ruby? No.

I think it is important to learn how to work in a given language, and it isn't that you should get stuck in your ways and try to write JavaScript as though it is Java (the opposite to what Douglas wants).

Learn the ways, do not feel the pressure to learn every library and feature, and get really good at your subset.