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Introduction to JavaScript

JavaScript is a lightweight interpreted programming language which was mainly created for the purpose of being a scripting language for web pages. Therefore, it is called the programming language of the web. Welcome to our introduction to JavaScript.

The term “interpreted” means that unlike “compiled” programming languages which are bundled up altogether by a compiler to machine code, “interpreted” programming languages are interpreted into machine code line-by-line (not altogether) by an interpreter.

History of JavaScript 🗓

Brendan Eich created JavaScript in the year 1995 while he was working for Netscape to put the Scheme language in the Netscape Navigator Browser. He created the first version in just 10 days and was called “Mocha” and later named as “LiveScript”. After Netscape merged with Sun Microsystems, it was later coined as “JavaScript”. Now, JavaScript powers about 95% of all the websites in the world.

Some JavaScript Frameworks 🔥

  • React.js ⚛ – The Frontend Framework created by Facebook for building scalable User Interfaces and UI components in websites.
  • Vue.js ✌ – The Frontend Framework following the model-view-viewmodal architecture for building UI components in websites.
  • Node.js 💻 – The JavaScript runtime environment which lets us run JS code directly into a terminal outside the web browser.
  • Express.js ⚡ – The Backend Framework for Node.js that lets us build APIs and the server-side of web applications.

Requirements to Learn JavaScript 😉

This tutorial is suitable for beginners who have little to none previous programming knowledge. You can learn JavaScript even if you are completely new to programming. Just follow our lessons given in this course.

Applications 🤯

  • Building the frontend (design part) of websites.
  • Building the backend (database & server part) of websites.
  • Building cross-platform (Android & IOS) Mobile Applications.
  • Video Game Development.
  • Machine Learning and Data Visualization.

Advantages of using JavaScript 💘

  • JavaScript is relatively lightweight & faster to execute as it supports Just-In-Time execution.
  • It is used by almost all browsers in the world. So, it is highly supportive.
  • Can be used for both Frontend and Backend side of Web Applications.
  • JavaScript is extremely versatile and can be used in almost all use cases for a developer like Mobile App Development, Web Development, Machine Learning, etc.
  • JavaScript can be inserted into any webpage no mattter what the tech stack is.
  • JavaScript is scalable and has of the largest community online for a programming language.

Disadvantages of using JavaScript 💔

  • Client-side security is one of the topics of major concern for JS users as there is a high chance of hackers exploiting the bugs as JS is executed on the browser.
  • JavaScript is not strongly typed. So, there is a high chance of bugs appearing in developers’ code. The solution to this might be the new Typescript programming language which is a superset of JavaScript.
  • Some browsers might still support older versions of JavaScript which might cause problems for developers.

Example JavaScript Code 😎

The code given below is an introduction to JavaScript. It uses JavaScript Variables and Console to display messages. You will learn about them in our upcoming lessons.

var message = "Hello, I am JavaScript";

console.log(message);

//Displays "Hello, I am JavaScript"

This course will take you on a journey towards understanding JavaScript and why it is one of the most used programming languages in the world.

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