JavaScript is the most used and most popular programming language in the world right now, this is based off 2021 stack overflow survey's of the most popular programming language out there.
What make JavaScript so popular and loved amongst developers out there? Hopefully in this article we will explore JavaScript in detail and get to know why it is so popular. We will also get a good understanding of how JavaScript Works, what we can use it for and how out fits into the toolbox of software engineers in 2022.
Intro
JavaScript is a scripting language that was invented at Netscape by Brendan Eich and it was released in September Of 1995. It was originally released at LiveScript, but its name was changed to JavaScript in December of the same year of it was released. This was a marketing ploy to get engineers to start using JavaScript, Java was the new programming language that was causing waves in the industry and Netscape wanted to steal some of the shine of Java so they adopted the naming strategy above. However it should be noted that the two languages bear very little similarity and have very different syntax.
What is JavaScript
JavaScript is A dynamically typed, object oriented prototype based, asynchronous scripting language. JavaScript is also event driven in nature. Let's explore shortly what reach of this term actually means.
JavaScript as a dynamically typed language implies that there is a lack of type checking, we can store any type of value inside a variable and later reassign a value of another type to the same variable, errors due to inconsistency in types are only discovered at run time; when our code is being executed.
JavaScript as a scripting language is not meant to be compiled before it is executed, however JavaScript code is compiled on the fly directly in the browser by what is known as a JIT (Just In Time) compiler, It makes more sense to compile our JavaScript code because the modern JavaScript app is robust and may need to run for several hours in the browser.
JavaScript supports the use of both OOP and functional programming paradigm, although it is to note that JavaScript is not a full fledged OOP language in that it lacks the use classes and interfaces. JavaScript uses prototypes for inheritance although it supports the four pillars of OOP.
JavaScript is also an asynchronous language in that we can start something at some point, pause it and do other tasks, later return to finish the first task, it achieves this with the help of the event loop and call stack which we will look at later in this series, you should also know that JavaScript runs on a single processor core.
Where could we use JavaScript
In 2022 JavaScript is the most practical language to use for software development, JavaScript can be used for client side scripting with exceptional frameworks and libraries to simplify the hell out of your job. The range of client side apps we can ship with JavaScript includes; SPAs, PWA, static websites.
JavaScript is also used for server side or backend development, with node js which is built on the V8 engine that also powers Google chromium browsers, we can communicate with a database, have access to a file system, direct access to cpus and cores made available to the server all with JavaScript, in a simple and intuitive way when working with node js.
JavaScript can be used for mobile app development, this can be powered by react native or you can use ionic powered by cordoba but i don't totally agree that its a practical approach for building cross platform mobile apps, Flutter definitely wins, but you could use JavaScript if you already know JavaScript and want to leverage on that knowledge, then react native definitely got your back.
JavaScript can also be used for desktop application development with electron js although bundle size of apps we've built with electron js was quite amazing, it ran smoothly and gave us what we wanted, vs code is built with electron js. You know how much you like your vs code.
We have established three different areas of software development that JavaScript is applicable, we could also use JavaScript for
other aspects of software development like Machine Learning, Cryptography, and lots more, so in 2022, I'm betting on JavaScript again to be the most popular programming language.
To get started with JavaScript open up your browser and hit ctrl + shift + i. It will bring up the developer tools. Select the console tab if it is not already selected for you, and let's write a welcome program. Enter the following in the console and press enter!!
console.log("Hello World");
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