Importance of JavaScript in Industry!

What is JavaScript, its features, frameworks, applications & industry usecases.

◆ What is JavaScript ?

JavaScript is a text-based programming language used both on the client-side and server-side that allows you to make web pages interactive. Where HTML and CSS are languages that give structure and style to web pages, JavaScript gives web pages interactive elements that engage a user. Common examples of JavaScript that you might use every day include the search box on Amazon, a news recap video embedded on The New York Times, or refreshing your Twitter feed.

◆ History of JavaScript ?

In 1993, Mosaic, the first popular web browser, came into existence. In the year 1994, Netscape was founded by Marc Andreessen. He realized that the web needed to become more dynamic. Thus, a ‘glue language’ was believed to be provided to HTML to make web designing easy for designers and part-time programmers. Consequently, in 1995, the company recruited Brendan Eich intending to implement and embed Scheme programming language to the browser. But, before Brendan could start, the company merged with Sun Microsystems for adding Java into its Navigator so that it could compete with Microsoft over the web technologies and platforms. Now, two languages were there: Java and the scripting language. Further, Netscape decided to give a similar name to the scripting language as Java’s. It led to ‘Javascript’. Finally, in May 1995, Marc Andreessen coined the first code of Javascript named ‘Mocha’. Later, the marketing team replaced the name with ‘LiveScript’. But, due to trademark reasons and certain other reasons, in December 1995, the language was finally renamed to ‘JavaScript’. From then, JavaScript came into existence.

◆ What is JavaScript used for ?

1. Adding interactive behavior to web pages

JavaScript allows users to interact with web pages. There are almost no limits to the things you can do with JavaScript on a web page, these are just a few examples:

• Show or hide more information with the click of a button
• Change the color of a button when the mouse hovers over it
• Slide through a carousel of images on the homepage
• Zooming in or zooming out on an image
• Displaying a timer or count-down on a website
• Playing audio and video in a web page
• Displaying animations

2. Creating web and mobile apps

Developers can use various JavaScript frameworks for developing and building web and mobile apps. JavaScript frameworks are collections of JavaScript code libraries that provide developers with pre-written code to use for routine programming features and tasks — literally a framework to build websites or web applications around.

Popular JavaScript front-end frameworks include React, React Native, Angular, and Vue. Many companies use Node.js, a JavaScript runtime environment built on Google Chrome’s JavaScript V8 engine. A few famous examples include Paypal, LinkedIn, Netflix, and Uber!

3. Building web servers and developing server applications

Beyond websites and apps, developers can also use JavaScript to build simple web servers and develop the back-end infrastructure using Node.js.

4. Game development

Of course, you can also use JavaScript to create browser games. These are a great way for beginning developers to practice their JavaScript skills.

◆ Major frameworks in JavaScript

A structure refers to the set of ready-to-use codes written in JavaScript to build software solutions. It comes with a predetermined application design and toolset. Thus, the development process can be fast-forwarded, which in turn saves time, money, and effort for businesses. Here are a few handpicked JS frameworks which are highly influential and equally popular:

• React — Undoubtedly, it is one of the most preferred JS frameworks for building dynamic user interfaces with advanced features. It is used by major brands like Whatsapp, Airbnb, Facebook, Instagram, etc. React Native is an open-source mobile application framework built by Facebook. It is commonly used for rendering native mobile apps that are real and feature-rich.
• Angular — Angular is another popular JS framework that is best suited for building dynamic single-page applications. It is a desired JS framework for businesses owing to its amazing features which will substantially cut down the coding effort. An example for organizations that use AngularJS is none other than Google, the tech giant.
• Vue — Vue is a sought-after JS framework for front-end development. It is often referred to as a progressive framework, which means it can adapt to the needs of the developer. Adobe, Alibaba, Grammarly, and Xiaomi are some of the significant organizations that make applications based on Vue.
• Node — It is an event-driven framework which is extremely fast in operations. Node works well with applications that require high data processing. Some of the major brands that use Node are LinkedIn, Medium, Uber, and eBay.
• Ember — With its flow of functionality and simplicity, Ember makes app development an easy process. It is well-capable to develop complicated and broad client-side applications.

◆ Why use JavaScript over other programming languages ?

1. JavaScript is the most popular language

JavaScript is the most popular language, and is still increasing in popularity. According to this report from Stack Overflow, JavaScript is the most commonly used programming language, for the sixth year in a row. The popularity of JavaScript rose from 57% in 2013 to 70% in 2017. JavaScript is the most popular language above Java, Python, Ruby, and more.

2. There’s a low threshold to get started

JavaScript is the language that browsers use. It’s easy to get started with and to understand. You can get going right away — unlike other languages, you don’t have install a bunch of programs before you can even begin.

3. JavaScript is a fun, interactive language

You have a full user interface to play with right away — JavaScript has a graphical UI that’s fun and easy to manipulate. You can write code that will run in your browser, so you can build interactive projects earlier on in the learning process.

4. Strong support for learning

Every browser comes with source code viewing features that lets you learn from other people’s live code. Plus, JavaScript has the largest and most active repository of library code in the world. People in the JavaScript community are very active and supportive in sharing and making use of each other’s code — JavaScript has a large community on StackOverflow and over 3,600 JavaScript Meetup groups worldwide.

5. Great debugging tools for learning

An interactive JavaScript interpreter is built right into the browser, allowing you to experiment and get instantaneous feedback, which helps you learn faster.

6. It’s a great foundational language for learning more powerful programming styles

JavaScript comes out of the box with support for the event-driven programming style, where the flow of your code is controlled by user events or system events. This style of programming is absolutely necessary for building user interfaces and is also a very helpful paradigm for designing scalable server-side systems.

◆ Companies Using JavaScript ?

There’s no denying that JavaScript is everywhere, but just how are some of the world’s largest tech companies using JavaScript ? Some of them are:

LinkedIn

LinkedIn relies on NodeJS for its mobile site. A few years back, LinkedIn used Rails for its mobile site. As with other other large Rails applications, it was slow, monolithic, and it scaled poorly.

LinkedIn switched over to NodeJS to solve its scaling problems. Node’s asynchronous capabilities allowed the LinkedIn mobile site to perform more quickly than before while using fewer resources. Node also made data sharing and building APIs easier for the LinkedIn developers.

Netflix

Netflix started out using Java for just about everything. They too ran into problems with Java’s size and the time it required to develop.

Over time, Netflix moved away from its more traditional structure into the cloud and started to introduce NodeJS. With Node, Netflix was able to break down pieces of their user interface into individual services. This more distributed approach was able to speed things up an alleviate stress on their servers. Today, a large portion of Netflix’s interface is running on Node.

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