If you asked me 3 years ago what language you should learn I would’ve said Ruby. If you asked me 6 years ago, it was PHP.

If you’re going to learn a language now, you need to learn JavaScript.

I concur.

Javascript Object Notation (JSON) is a fancy name for a simple idea: A web page can download data stored as javascript variables. It’s caused a buzz in the tech world because JSON is much easier to load, read and manipulate compared to XML. Also, parsing large XML files can be a large performance hit – JSON gives you an object, packaged up and ready to go!

JSON, it's XML for cool kids.