JavaScript Renaissance
JavaScript has a unique feat to its name
No other language with a history of existence of more than 20 years is as broken as JavaScript is. Why are people still using it? Why are the tech giants investing more in JS (to name a few, Facebook developing React, Google Angular and TensorFlow JS and Microsoft pushing on JS for ML and Data Science on their platforms).
The answer lies in how you see it. The developer’s perspective. The same language can give you one hell of a time, debugging and wondering why things broke. Or if written with proper style and discipline, it will make you wonder how it worked!
JavaScript was an attempt by Netscape to enable users to interact with their websites. Prior to it, a website used to serve static information like a brand’s logo, address and contact among other details, and their “vision mission” (if you bother to read it). Maybe a few things they do, or a few products/services they offer. JavaScript was to bring a possible way to interact between the clients (people who visit the website) and the server (the machine which hosts the website over internet.)
“Software is eating the world, the web is eating software, and JavaScript rules the web.”
This language has undergone many changes since its birth and the extent to which businesses need it, it is justified. Surely, it was developed in a hurry and has many flaws that other languages, which have been there for such a long time, usually don’t have. But the importance of JavaScript doesn’t get diminished by its flaws and is only esteemed by the creativity and possibilities that it brings.
The language has won a no-win situation by rewriting the rules
Today, JavaScript is the language you learn and use to make WebApps. There is no way you can go around JS. Moreover, JS can power many more things than just the client-side web. It has become an enormously famous tool among startups. React and NodeJS are the two skills Silicon Valley is hunting for. With Electron and other frameworks, JavaScript can be used to make native desktop apps. React Native can be used to make mobile apps. D3JS is a powerful library for data visualization and the still developing TensorFlow.JS is already adopted into the prestigious MIT’s Deep Learning courses.
Read our other Blog – Automation Testing Does What Manual Testing Cannot
JavaScript has undergone so many revisions and changes overtime that for anyone new to it that seems all clumsy to do anything and everything in JavaScript. But that’s not what the language offers, it’s the developer’s inability to absorb the good in the language and strain himself from the wrong style and habits of coding. ES6 (or JavaScript 2015) has a lot cleaner structure as compared to its predecessors, and the subsequent versions (JS2016, JS2017, …) becoming more and more mature. Read the top features of ES6 at https://webapplog.com/es6/
or watch the video below to get an overview. Anyone new to it should be aware of the underlying principles used in JS. For instance, why one empty array is not equal to another empty array (`[] == []` // returns false)
There are many good resources
You can learn the good habits to code in JavaScript and make the most out of the language without being troubled much. Once you have mastered that skill, there are endless possibilities that JavaScript brings to you today. From Web-Apps, to Machine Learning, Data Visualization, to IoT, JavaScript has left its presence undeterred. It is now up to you as to how you learn, code and use this language.
I have learned some good habits from “JavaScript Done Right” workshops organized by Devopedia Foundation. One can get a highlight of it at:
- https://gist.github.com/arvindpdmn/c7567fd7d0a870bc4e900d858856a625
- https://gist.github.com/arvindpdmn/9fb4c8860bdb9c8d0c7694640965d46e
The writer is a budding Software Engineer at Coviam Technologies and can be reached at twitter.com/ikmrgrv.
Blog Cover Photo by Maximilian Weisbecker on Unsplash