Javascript inspires me the most in the technology space. Every website that we browse from Google search or other search engines, uses JavaScript.
JavaScript facilitates every person, business, and organization’s interactive online presence across the world.
Now, what is JavaScript, exactly?
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JavaScript is the world's most popular programming language.
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Brendan Eich created the JavaScript programming language and co-founded the Mozilla project, the Mozilla Foundation, and the Mozilla Corporation.
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JavaScript is one of the core technologies of the World Wide Web (WWW), alongside HTML and CSS.
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As of 2022, 98% of websites use JavaScript for building webpages you can visually see (client side), often using third-party libraries.
Hence, one popular usage of JavaScript is to build webpages or to be more technical we can say, to build user interfaces. But you know what, we can do so much more than that with JavaScript! Here’s what I have discovered so far.
Scope of JavaScript
It is totally possible to build beautiful user interfaces with plain old JavaScript. However, the process of creating user interfaces can be improved dramatically using third-party libraries.
There are 3 such popular libraries/frameworks are:
- Vue.JS - created by Evan You, and is maintained by him and the rest of the active core team members.
- React JS - maintained by Meta and a community of individual developers and companies.
- Angular - led by the Angular Team at Google and by a community of individuals and corporations. Angular is a complete rewrite from the same team that built AngularJS.
The commonalities from the above libraries/frameworks include:
- Open-source JavaScript web application libraries/frameworks
- Most popular and widely and this means more resources and help is available out there from the community of developers
- Reduces your coding time by using templates and overall abstraction of repetitive code.
Now, comes one of the interesting parts of JavaScript. Yet another Software Engineering nerd, Ryan Dahl created something called Node.js. 🤓
Node.js is basically a JavaScript runtime that will let you write JavaScript code and run them anywhere outside the Web Browsers. This technology became so popular because of its usage in building back-end web applications by building RESTful APIs and Servers for the Web.
But, Why did it become so popular? Remember how we can build user interfaces with JavaScript. Well, now just imagine the power of writing JavaScript code for both the client side (the user interfaces) and the server side. That literally makes you a full-stack developer for the web! 🤯
Before Node.js, developers had to learn another programming language with a back-end development framework to build server applications. Now, we can use just one language, JavaScript for both the front-end and back-end of web applications. Cool, right?! 😎
Now, before we move on, if you are a user of the desktop apps like Visual Studio Code, WhatsApp, Twitch, Slack, or InVision, you are actually yet another version of JavaScript user. Yes, here we go again.
Electron is a free and open-source software framework developed and maintained by GitHub. So, basically, a team of nerds from GitHub created the framework which enables us to create cross-platform desktop applications using web technologies (including JavaScript). Not only that, these nerds built Electron in such a way that it is rendered using a flavor of the Chromium browser engine, and a backend using the Node.js runtime environment.
Let me increase your level of excitement by sharing another technology, called React Native. Initially React Native enables developers to build mobile applications, but now, we can actually go beyond that. Do you know what their tagline is? Learn once, write anywhere.
Let me break it down quickly for you. React Native is another open-source framework created by Meta, again. And this time, it is used to develop applications for platforms like Android, Android TV, iOS, macOS, tvOS, Web, Windows, and UWP by enabling developers to use the React framework along with native platform capabilities.
As I said, JavaScript is Everywhere! If you choose to learn React to build user interfaces, you can go a lot further using React Native 💻🖥📱 Crazy, right?!
So as you see as we can see javascript is used everywhere. Want to build a software application on any platform or should I say every platform? Or even want to push your boundaries and go further to explore fields such as the Internet of Things, Virtual reality, Testing, or Automation?
You name it! We have javascript libraries and frameworks for every field these days popping up.
So, the only limit is your imagination.
Start coding in javascript today!