Boy, was I wrong about the direction javascript would take... When I started my career back in 1997 I was lucky to work for a startup that envisioned social media as we now know it. We used Javascript a lot and... I hated it.
In later projects I have always advised against the use of Javascript in web applications, especially in online banking. It's my fault we ended up with way too rigid applications with full page rendering and waiting time for little tiny actions.
Now I realize that my dislike for Javascript was mostly about cross browser issues and DOM traversal trouble. All of this is resolved by smart people and smart API's. The language, although not perfect everywhere, is actually quite nice and very powerful.
I find myself currently working on a project that depends on Javascript and I love it.