Why should I be a ninja?

I looked at the introductory chapter in the book, and first I thought "Wow! Sounds like a cool thing to do!" But then my programmer's laziness kicked in and I thought "Wait a minute... these guys are doing all the hard work and building useful Javascript tools and making them available for me to use!"

So why should I be a ninja? Why shouldn't I just let the ninjas do their thing and then use the tools they produce?

jQuery, for example provides a great deal of value and makes doing things that are normally a pain in the butt, a lot easier.

But... libraries can only go so far. You still need to write your own on-page script to make them act the way that you want, and to make use of the libraries doing their magic.

Having a good grasp of JavaScript makes your on-page code, including that which makes use of the libraries, that much better.

It's sort of like asking if you need to know Java well -- after all, there are libraries!

Besides, ninjas are cool!

It should've been a dueling book, I say. One of you writes five chapters of how to be a JavaScript ninja, and the other writes five chapters of how to be a JavaScript pirate. Then the book gets put together flipped around and upside down, so readers start each half from the respective cover and read to the middle.

Hmmm, JavaScript pirate. I like that! "Arrrrrrrrrrr, string of pearls or your eldest closure!"

By the way, no one yet seems to have picked up that even though the title contains "Ninja" that the picture on the cover is a Samurai!

Apparently, Manning's extensive collection of folks in period costumes lacks a ninja. So Samurai is as close as we get. Which is fine with me. Samurai are just as cool as ninjas.

Right now I'm more of a Javascript patzer. I think there's probably three levels between "patzer" and "ninja" but I don't know what you'd call them.