Hacker News articles and webapp

I just read a couple of post that has quipped my interest in getting starting in webapplications. I found the posts here, where someone was learning Java Script. His results were impressive.

The other posts that I found were through a search on "profitable weekend project" on Hacker News and it brought up quite a few projects.

Some of the projects were quite simple to implement, include www.whatportis.com. It just allows the user to enter a port number and it tells you what it is used for. The other interesting thing is that a simple site like this is a great server for on-line adverts. 

So my motivation for learning Java scripting is to give me the tools to build these simple webapp. Perhaps getting more complicated as my skill set grows.