A fun interactive way to get folks to lean the basics (and quirks) of JavaScript is to have them run through the gamified, real-time exercises on http://www.codeacademy.com.

I think Robert is onto something. I don’t think teaching your audience the syntax and mechanics of the JavaScript language will be hard. What’s going to be hard is if you have to teach programmers with no event-driven GUI programming experience how to write even-driven GUIs. That is a huge shift because it requires understanding idoms and especially architectural patterns that they won’t be familiar with.

For example, many traditional developers are intimidated by the timeline in flash, and so opt for flex instead. It’s a fine choice, but there are some things that are just done better in flash. So, I’ve found myself needing to relate what another developer is used to doing over the timeline. It’s usually a quick explanation that the loop exists in the flash player, so flex makes use of it too, and that the timeline is simply a way to change the properties of an object over time.

Regarding javascript, you’ll probably need to take everyone you’re teaching and relate it to their particular area of expertise. It sounds pretty cliche, but you’ll probably have to build bridges to ease people into it. If you’re working with a traditional java developer, something like, “Ok, javascript doesn’t have classes, but this is how I organize my code so it makes the most sense to me later when I come back to it.”

Haha – I learned through practical application, and by taking existing JavaScript code and rewriting it – which I found is particularly helpful if you have someone who is familiar with one framework language and need them to write it in another language – translating a familiar piece of code helps you know what *should* be done, and helps get you acquainted with the new API docs of the other framework application.

I found APIs and (in the case of Dojo) user forums to be incredibly helpful – but that was a couple years ago, and I hear their community has grown even more. Twitter can also be useful since there are several Dojo accounts.

David Walsh also has a few articles discussing Dojo (and I think a few that has the code written for three frameworks – jQuery, Dojo and MooTools).

Starting with an asynchronous framework like jQuery (doing simple event listeners) is a great way to start off I think as well.

Of course I learned through years of painful mistakes, so that’s another way to go