Dan Webb asks what are your JavaScript essentials? Those bits and pieces you can’t live without that get copy/pasted from project to project. His pragmatic list includes the $ function, getElementsByClassName, Dean’s event handling, the JS 1.6 array methods, and the DOMContentLoaded event. His full script that he guarantees he _won’t_ support is here.
Do you start with a full on framework or library no matter what the project size, or do you have a small script you use similiar to Dan’s? Do you go with a clean slate until you really feel pain, or do you just swear off javascript and start with GWT or a drag and drop IDE?