JavaScript Article

Introduction

JavaScript, otherwise known as JS, is a high-level, interpreted programming language that conforms to the ECMAScript specification. It is a language that is also characterised as dynamic, weakly typed, prototype-based and multi-paradigm. It first appeared in late 1995.

The latest version of JavaScript is ECMAScript 2018.

Features

JavaScript is one of the three core technologies of the World Wide Web (along with HTML and CSS). JavaScript enables interactive web pages which includes event handling (such as click events)

APIs for working with text, arrays, dates, regular expressions and the DOM are all supported by JavaScript. However the language does not include any I/O, such as networking, storage, or graphic facilities. Hence it is mostly client-side based.

JavaScript has been the basis of many other popular libaries, technologies and frameworks to form such as jQuery, Node.js, AngularJS and ReactJS. This makes JavaScript (including all its offshoots) to be a tough language to master in its entireity, but however, gives promising rewards.

Pros/Cons

JavaScript has its pros and cons:

Pros	Cons
Losely typed language. Easy to learn the basics.	Takes a while to master all the libraries and additions.
JavaScript jobs are needed (usually front end).	Since JavaScript is easy to learn at first, many people usually learn it as their first programming language.
Can be used with OOP, Functional and Procedural programming styles.	Vanilla JS does not include I/O. Only additional libraries / frameworks / technologies do.
JavaScript is used in many applications, mainly on websites but as of recently elsewhere as well such as on PDF software.	Many jobs require the use of applications which don't use the web require languages other than JavaScript.

Extra Programs

These are the extra libraries, frameworks and technologies that are involved with JavaScript:

ReactJS
jQuery
Node.js
TypeScript
Redux
AngularJS

Summary

In conclusion:

JavaScript is a good starting language to learn, this is because it offers flexibility in terms of changing types, programming styles and ease of use. However because JavaScript is a relatively easy language to learn, there are lots of people learning it and the demand for pure JavaScript developers is not as high as compared to other programming languages (such as c#). But if you learn the additional libraries and technologies, JavaScript is very handy to have indeed.

JavaScript article