Tonight was the second meetup of the Boston JavaScript group and it was a huge success. 18 people attended, in all, and there was a lot of discussion about all forms of JavaScript.

There were, at least, 3 people who actively use JavaScript on the server-side including Jason Wadsworth the creator of Crosscheck. We got to discuss the many issues surrounding testing client-side JavaScript in a server-side environment. I think we all agreed that it’s an incredibly difficult subject, fraught with peril.

A good showing of ECMAScript 4 was in place with Dave Herman attending. We got to catch up on the state of ES4 and discuss the reference implementation. I’m trying to pull together some real-world code bases for us to examine and, thankfully, the reference implementation is now to a point where I can start to do that.

In general, a lot of talk was done concerning JavaScript testing solutions and JavaScript frameworks. In general there was a good coverage of users: Prototype, ExtJS, and jQuery were all represented. There was also some talk concerning Comet and Erlyweb.

In all, it was an impressive night. Even though it was highly social I felt like it was still an extremely technical, and quite relevant, experience. I suspect that we’ll be seeing some presentations at future meetups but that depends a lot on how formalized the group will become. 18 members isn’t too bad for something that’s still quite new. I’m looking forward to the next one!