Javascript Overview - JavaScript Technologies

Last Updated on February 26th, 2024

JAVASCRIPT OVERVIEW AND JAVASCRIPT TECHNOLOGIES || COMPLETE GUIDE

There are many programming languages that are being used for developing websites, games and apps. Some are specific to use for special purposes like HTML, CSS and JavaScript are used for website or web app development. PHP is frequently used to build dynamic web pages and web applications. It can generate HTML, process forms, and interact with databases, making it a popular choice for building websites. Node.js is suitable for building real-time web applications, such as chat applications, online gaming platforms, and collaborative tools. Python is extensively used for data science and data analytics. Python’s extensive libraries, including TensorFlow, PyTorch, and scikit-learn, make it a favorite choice for developing machine learning models and AI applications.

In this article, we are focusing on ‘JavaScript Overview & JavaScript Technologies’.

What is JavaScript?

JavaScript is a lightweight programming language used by web developers in addition with HTML, CSS for adding dynamic and interaction to web pages, applications ,servers and in games.

Importance of JavaScript becomes significant as CSS and HTML alone are not enough to achieve an interactive user interaction.

JavaScript is used to implement complex features on web pages as it is a scripting or programming language on webpages. It is used to add interactive things on websites such as displaying time content updates, interactive maps, animated 2D/3D graphics, scrolling video jukeboxes etc.

JavaScript has wide application in web, mobile app and game development making it a valuable language to learn. We can create a calculator using only JavaScript. In fact, JavaScript is commonly used for building web-based calculators like standard form calculator used for converting scientific notation of a simple whole number.

How does JavaScript add existence to web pages?

JavaScript is a scripting language that allows you to create dynamic web page content. It creates components such as dropdown menus, animated images, and dynamic backdrop colors to improve user’s interaction with web sites.

What is the Importance of JavaScript?

The preliminary version of JavaScript language was used for internal use. After the ECMA international standard specification for web browser JavaScript introduced ECMAScript in the market. It was a general purpose scripting language to ensure web pages can be viewed the same across different browsers and devices.

JavaScript has continued to grow along with new browsers like Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome. Later it introduced a modern JavaScript engine called v8 which compiles bytecode to native machine code.

JavaScript is so famous that it has plenty of frameworks and libraries to work with such as Angular JS, jQuery and React JS. With JavaScript interactive calculators like standard form calculator can be formed.

JavaScript Overview & Its Usages

JavaScript has various features that are being implemented in different areas. Following are some of the basic usages of JavaScript:

1) Web and Mobile Apps

JavaScript is used in making web and mobile apps specially for businesses apps. The language is easy to learn, making the development process quicker and efficient. It makes the system easy to use, versatile and robust.

Nowadays it is easy to make web and mobile apps with JavaScript language as many frameworks are now available in the market. Frameworks consist of JavaScript code libraries which allow developers to use pre-written JavaScript code in their projects. It saves their time and effort from writing code from the scratch.

It is easy to develop and debug the code with JavaScript framework.

Calculator-online.net is a web page based on JavaScript and other programming languages that has calculators like standard form calculators.

2) Building Web Servers and Server Applications

JavaScript allows developers to build servers and back end infrastructure and applications.

HTTP requests are handled by either node.js own web server or third party server like Microsoft internet information services and Apache. The built-in module displays plain text when a web page is accessed by a user.

3) For creating Interactive behavior on websites

The main function of JavaScript is adding dynamicity to web pages. Displaying animations, modifying text visibility and creating dropdown menus are some applications of JavaScript.

Using only HTML and CSS code a static website is built with a static display. A user will have a better interaction experience with a web page if JavaScript is used in creating websites.

4) Game Development

A website based game can be built with JavaScript along with use of HTML5 and application programming language (API) like WebGL. For developing games JavaScript based game engines like phaser, gdevelop and kiwi.js are available for rendering graphics, code recycling and cross platform applications. Some examples of games made with JavaScript are angry bird, wizard and 2048.

Why is the JavaScript never outdated?

JavaScript is continuously surviving in the market as it has numerous advantages over its competitors. Some are discussed below.

1) Simplicity

JavaScript is easier to learn and implement due to its simple structure so the app development process of apps becomes faster. It is a faster lightweight language that runs faster than other languages. Some errors and bugs are easy to spot and rectify in coding.

2) Speed

Without connecting to the server first or needing a compiler JavaScript executes the script directly within the web browser. It speeds up the running of code. Major web browsers allow JavaScript to compile code during program execution.

3) Versatility

It is a versatile language compatible with other languages like PHP, Perl and Java. It is also available to data science and machine learning for developers.

4) Popularity

Many resources and forums are available on JavaScript for educating beginners the language. You can take help from an online forum to fix the bug and errors.

5) Server Load

Another benefit of JavaScript is that it reduces the request sent to the server. Data validation is done through a web browser and updates are applied to certain web page sections therefore the upgrade website is not out of access and the whole process of upgrading is rapid and fast.

6) Updates

JavaScript development team and ECMA international community is continuously working on updates, creating new frameworks and libraries to remain at the top of the industry.

What are JavaScript Frameworks?

JavaScript has always been one of the best programming languages over the years. Initially JavaScript was used for client side but due to NodeJS it is now used on server side programming language. In short, JavaScript is the language of a website. All the website-like tool based websites use JavaScript, HTML, CSS for developing various websites.

According to statistics JavaScript with HTML/CSS were the most commonly used programming languages among software developers worldwide. On the whole HTML/CSS, SQL, Python and Java are the top 5 most extensively used programming languages worldwide.

Frameworks are flexible for designing websites as it contains libraries and some built-in features to be easy to apply. Therefore website developers prefer to use JavaScript framework. It makes the job easy with the type of tools used for JavaScript. The work becomes more accessible and manageable.

An Overview On JavaScript Technologies

Generally, we categorize JavaScript Technologies in two parts: Server Side and Client Side. Now let’s discuss few of the trending technologies of JavaScript one by one:

Client side JavaScript Technologies

Let’s discuss about some of the client side JavaScript Technologies one by one:

Angular JS

AngularJS is one of the most powerful, dynamic and open-source JavaScript frameworks. It is considered as the best software development developed by Google in 2009. AngularJS development company helps businesses to make wonderful applications. Google also uses this framework for developing a single page application. AngularJS defines the attribute to perform data binding and extends the HTML into application.

Pros of Angular JS

– Two way data binding

– DOM manipulation

– Improved server performance

– Faster application prototyping

– Responsive web

– Highly testable products

– The MVVM architecture

Cons of Angular JS

– JS support mandatory

– Inexperience with MVC

– Possible time consumption

– Difficult to learn

With Angular JS a high performance animation timelines can be designed and complex choreographies with little coding can be generated using angular intuitive API.

React JS

This framework is very popular that was created by Facebook. The main purpose of react framework is to develop dynamic user interface of web pages. It uses virtual DOM which helps developers to write code.

Pros of React JS

– It can create dynamic and interactive UI for websites and mobile app development.

– It uses a one-way data binding technique with an application architecture called flux control. The flux manages the application workflow and updates the user view.

– React uses native components instead of website components.

– Many famous companies like Netflix, NewYork Times, Dropbox consider using React JS for developing applications.

Cons of React JS

– The development of react is so fast it becomes difficult to support web developers to relearn things and do it regularly

– React JS is developing so fast that it is not focusing on Documentation

– React JS covers only UI layers.

Vue JS

Vue JS is another JavaScript framework which is an open source progressive technology with various tools to create single page applications and user interface.

It was released around February 2014 and considered as widely used software technologies used by web application development companies. Vue JS is well known for its execution and simplicity.

For single page web applications vue.js is focused on centered around the view layer. It offers a lot of functionality for the view layer. Vue.js is a client side JavaScript technology.

Server side JavaScript Technologies

Node.js

For executing JavaScript code outside a browser Node.js provides a runtime environment. Node.js is an open source and cross platform environment for JavaScript code. It is not a framework or programming language. It is used to build back-end services like APIs like Web App or Mobile App. Large production industries use node.js such as PayPal, Uber, Netflix, Walmart and some more.

Advantages of NodeJS

– The application made are easily scalable to both horizontal and vertical directions

– It is preferable due to faster synchronization

– It acts like a fast suite. All operations like reading or writing in the database, network connection or file system can be done quickly.

– It has the caching ability of a single module. Whenever there is a request for the first module it gets cached in application memory so you do not need to re-execute the code.

Reason to Choose Node.js

– It is easy to get started and can be used for prototyping and agile development

– It can give fast and highly scalable services

– Node.js works on JavaScript, so a JavaScript programmer can easily build back-end services

– It has asynchronous or non-blocking nature and provides a large ecosystem for open source libraries.

– Node.js is used to build real time chats, complex single page applications , real time collaboration tools, streaming apps JSON APIs based applications.

Express.JS

The aim of every back end developer is to make robust and scalable server side applications. It was introduced in 2010 and provides a minimal set of features for web and mobile applications. It allows developers to choose and integrate additional libraries based on their requirements. As express JS is lightweight and easy to use for web developers.

Advantages of Express.JS

– Minimal and lightweight framework

– Quick and fast

– Easy to learn and use

– Middleware support which support logging, authentication and error handling

– Handle dynamic URLs

– Support variety of templates

Nest JS

Nest JS was released in 2017 which is used for building efficient, scalable and maintainable server side applications. It is a progressive node.js framework which follows the modular design principle of angular.js. It incorporates typescript which makes it a compelling choice for developers familiar with Angular JS.

Deno

Deno is a safe JavaScript and TypeScript runtime designed by Ryan Dahl (the developer of Node.js). Deno, which was released in 2020, addresses some of Node.js’ design concerns and offers features like as built-in TypeScript compatibility, security by default, and a decentralized module system.

JavaScript build tools and Package Managers

npm

npm (Node Package Manager), introduced with Node.js, is a JavaScript package manager. It enables developers to exchange and reuse code by efficiently managing dependencies. The Node.js package manager, npm, is widely used in both client-side and server-side programming.

Yarn

Yarn is a JavaScript package manager that was published by Facebook in 2016. It was created to address some of npm’s shortcomings by enabling faster and more deterministic dependency resolution. Yarn works with the npm registry and is widely used as a replacement for npm.

Conclusion

Initially thought to be a basic scripting language for web pages, JavaScript has evolved into a multipurpose and mature programming language for front and back end web programmers. It has a pivotal role in web development. Over the years many technologies, frameworks for client side and server sides have developed making it more useful for website app development.

Javascript Overview – JavaScript Technologies