It’s no secret that with every day, come new technology trends, tools and new programming methodologies, which create a lot of buzz amongst the techies by facilitating more flexibility and reliability in the coding architecture. But, if you don’t lift your head up to look at the next year’s projects, it might be possible that you could end up coding yourself into an inescapable hole. To keep your web development arsenal afresh, we introduce to you – the futuristic programming language that is steadily sowing its seeds in the evolving software industry to produce highly responsive web applications that are packed with advanced features and cater to the dynamic needs of user-centric businesses. Yes, JavaScript – which although emerged more than a decade ago, still holds the future that’s screaming across the sky faster than one can see.
Key Fact
As per the Stack Overflow survey comprised of 56,033 developers, JavaScript again hit the top of the list as the most popular programming language.
JavaScript: A quick overview
JavaScript is a computer programming language used for scripting interactive effects inside the web browsers. The language is supported by all popular browsers including Microsoft Internet Explorer (beginning with version 3.0), Firefox, Opera, Safari, Google Chrome, etc. It has the capability of making a website more interactive with features like slideshows, advertising pop-ups, and Google’s auto complete functionality.
The History of JavaScript
It was back in 1995 when Netscape had a strong presence in the young web, JavaScript came into existence as a simple client-side scripting language for web browsers. It was created by Brendan Eich to implement something similar to Apple’s HyperCard – which was mainly developed to build apps in an effortless manner. Initially, it was nicknamed Mocha, further released in beta as LiveScript and then it eventually got named as JavaScript when Sun Microsystems signed a license agreement with Netscape. In the early days, it had become the most disliked and disdained language. It faced a series of criticisms by many users and developers that were unceasingly pointing out design errors.
So, you may be wondering why JavaScript is widely popular nowadays?
After the first decade, which was full of dislikes, JavaScript has started evolving. Originally a client-side language, this programming lanuage later turned to server-side. Developers changed their mindset with the revolutionary advent of Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX) and then the journey begins to the path of popularity. Later, jQuery made JavaScript more interesting by allowing developers to create new applications. Next, Node.js has taken this programming language to the all-new level. In overall, this programming language established itself as the most revolutionary and multi-paradigm language with compelling features such as:
- Prototype-based Inheritance
- Closures
- JSON (a subset of the object literal notation of JavaScript)
- Asynchronous event-driven programming
- Functions as objects
Why is JavaScript the first preference of developers?
It has become the dominant language of the web as all the modern web browsers implement this language. It is the only one language that can be deployed on all personal computers and mobile devices globally. It is the most powerful, versatile, and fully-functional object-oriented programming language similar to the more traditional languages like C++. Ruby, or Java.
Did you know?
Full-scale applications such as Gmail and Google Maps are programmed in Javascript.
Of late, industry analyst firm RedMonk published a “programming language popularity ranking” wherein JavaScript led the chart, followed closely by Java, PHP, C#, and Python. In fact, it is being said that you cannot be a web developer if you don’t know JavaScript. A Powerful notion such as this, leaves very little space for any doubt on its capabilities.
According to Web Technology Surveys, it has been found that JavaScript is used by 94.7% of all the websites.
Here is a rundown of some important plus points of JavaScript that makes it the most popular amongst developers:
Client-side processing:
It implies that the code is executed on the user’s processor instead of the webserver. This, in turn, saves the bandwidth and reduces the extra load from the server.
Easy to learn & implement:
The syntax of the language is identical to simple English, which makes it easier for developers to learn. As developers being able to use the same language in the front end and back end, it makes the programming task easier.
Extended Functionality to Web Pages:
The functionality of any web application can be extended by adding third-party add-ons in JavaScript. Mostly, JavaScript developers write snippets that can be further used in the necessary web pages.
It’s completely free:
You don’t need to purchase JavaScript. Also, it doesn’t require any special compilers or editors. On the client-side, it comes with a browser and executes within a browser.
Easy to debug:
Well, all browsers allow you to debug your JavaScript code. However, there are some free online tools available that provide a logging capability to write and store the values of your variables at various execution stages of your program. More importantly, you can modify the code in real-time and figure out the changes immediately.
Powerful and Free Frameworks Libraries:
Developing software is quite a challenging task. Fortunately, there are free frameworks and libraries available in JavaScript that allow developers to code error-free and quickly. Some popular frameworks are AngularJS, Backbone.js, Bootstrap. While the libraries are jQuery, Prototype, and Dojo.
Where is the future heading?
From the above points, it is clear that the JavaScript community continues to expand, and the demand for developers who have command over pure JavaScript and specific JavaScript libraries and frameworks is high in the software industry. It is no doubt that JavaScript is the #1 most-used language on GitHub, and this trend is up-surging with no signs of slowing down. So, when it comes to the most valuable programming language for the future, JavaScript will surely rule the roost for a long time to come.
