The magic word that opens new worlds

Closure.

I'm not a CS major. I've been doing JS for a while and found very few things that I didn't know. One of them, was why some variables remain in scope and some not. I tried searching for answers, but Google is of little help if you don't know what you're looking for.

Closure. I read somewhere the word and BAM! a whole new world openened, of people that know what they're doing in JavaScript (not form validation scripts, not drag-and-drop out-of-the-box script crap). I pored through [web] pages and pages and learned a lot more than I thought I could. Not only I learned about fancy stuff (real programming) in JS, but I also learned some humility: if I don't find more info, it's NOT because I already know everything there is to know.

This word immediately answered what I wanted to know, and the pages linked to even more pages with even more in-depth knowledge not only about JS, but also usability and some cool browser hacks. I had tapped into a higher plane of knowledge.

Forget "open sesame", as "closure" --ironically-- opened more doors for me.