The Ultimate JavaScript Guide for Beginners
What is JavaScript?
JavaScript is a High-Level Programming Language that is mainly used for Front-End Web Development, it was invented by Brenda Eich in 1995 for Netscape 2 which in 1997 became ECMA-262 standard. JavaScript is easy to learn, and a very popular, as it reaches the world most popular programming in 2020 as reported by Stack Overflow.
Features of JavaScript?
There are many features of JavaScript, but in this article we will only consider the main features that makes JavaScript wonderful.
Light Weight
JavaScript is an interpreted scripting language not a General Purpose Programming Language like Python, it is build based on a structure of Just-in-Time (JIT) Compilation which contributes to its fast processing of code. JavaScript was only used before in browsers, but now can be impletemented in servers for backend-development.
Case Sensitive
JavaScirpt is a case sensitive programming language, i.e. it differentiate between upper and lower cases in terms of variable defination. Example: declaration of 'const name;' is not equal to 'const Name'.
Handling of Events
Javascript Event Handlers are very wonderful, you can attach event listener to almost every element on the page, and listen on different types of events, more importantly you can listen to events like 'onsubmit' on a form to control how the application behaves when a form is submitted.
Object Oriented
It also provide Object Oriented Programming (OOP), just like other programming languages such as Java, Python etc, and provide features like prototype and inheritance.
Asynchrous Processing
It has certain features that allows you to process functions asynchrously, which means the function won't block other part of the code from running, this help developers to perform operations like querying database, making api get requests or posting requests to a remote or external server.
Platform Independency
JavaScript code can be run on any platform on a web browser, it is platform independent because it runs mainly on the web browser before the introduction of Node JS, which is a JavaScript Environment that allows JavaScript to be run outside of a web browser.
Client-side Form Validations
Developers mostly use JavaScript for client-side form validations, like Alpha-numeric password, email inputs, control checking of checkboxes, selection of radio buttons, restrict empty submission of forms and many more. Many features of validations can be implemented simply with the use of JavaScript via the client-side.
Uses of JavaScript
Front-end Development
JavaScript is mostly and purposely used for Front End Development, it has libraries and frameworks that makes frontend development absolutely easy and wonderful. Jquery is a JavaScript Library that is used to simplify writing plain JavaScript code, stimulating Ajax request and transversing and editing the Document Object Model (DOM). On the other hand React and Vue are frameworks that makes build a JavaScript frontend more simple and flexible.
Back-end Development
JavaScript can be used for Back-end Development with the help of Node JS, a JavaScript Runtime Environment that allows running a JavaScript code outside a web browser. Representational State Transfer (APIs) are widely develop to interact with JavaScript frontend libraries or frameworks.
Mobile Development
With the Help of React Native, JavaScript can be used to build a cross platform mobile applications (both Android and IOS), together with HTML and CSS.
Game Development
Bejeweled and Tower Building are popular games that are completely build on JavaScript, but you have to know that building an advances games will be more challenging to the developer as JavaScript is not mainly develop for building games. Normally, 2D games are the most developed games with JavaScript but nowadays, other libraries are also created for building 3D games.
In conclusion, JavaScript is really wonderful and useful to learn, follow our future posts for more. Thanks for reading.