Steps to Learning New Tech
Do you just use your browser to browse? That's so 20th century.
It's late. That's a link. That's a link posted when it is late.
I've been on a 14 hour bender of coding, and what I can tell you right now with a high level of assurance is that I absolutely hate the Prototype and script.aculo.us Javascript libraries. Which... is a good sign.
Whenever I am learning new paradigms/tech/ways-of-doing-stuff, I always go through a phase of hating it. Wondering why it does this or that. Why things are this way and not the other way. Why do I have to jump through hoop foo when all I want to do is bar.
What is actually happening is that I am hitting the limitations of my understandings, and I am being pushed to expand them, which takes effort... and I am lazy... and impatient; so I am not inclined (more info on why laziness and impatience are good located at Virtues of a Great Programmer). But, the more I persevere; the more accepting I get. Then, I eventually just "know the ropes"; and everything is good.
So, right now, I am in the stage of hate; which is good. On the other hand, I still hate the DOM. That one will never go away.
Jeremy, if you haven't seen it, check out the Behaviour library. It's the *aculous library's new best friend and makes code dramatically easier to read.