I am a self-taught web developer/programmer. I started out about two years ago by learning how to make simple dynamic websites with HTML/CSS/PHP. Then I started dabbling with animation...

Enter jQuery

I've become quite proficient with jQuery over the last year and I've even started making my own plugins. I've spent most of my effort learning how to beautify websites with fancy effects and what not.

Upon tackling my first full-blown application, I realized how under-developed my knowledge of JavaScript actually is. jQuery has allowed me to rely on its framework so heavily that I rarely use any interesting functions, techniques, or whatever that are 'native' to the JavaScript language.

For example:

I have a basic understanding of what a closure is... but I am unsure where this technique can actually benefit me. Although as I understand it, that's what my jQuery plugins do with (function ($){//plugin code here})(jQuery). I've seen many posts/blogs/whatever about memory leaks and circular references which is concerning.

I'm frustrated because I can wrap my head around the basic concepts of what these are just by reading the articles, but I'm finding that the deeper I go the more I don't understand. The vocabulary alone is burdensome. Let alone how to actually use these techniques/functions/language features.

I am trying to figure out what I don't know

I'm looking to gather any advice, techniques, articles, books, videos, snippets, examples, potential pitfalls... really anything you have regarding application development with JavaScript/jQuery.