The Future is…JavaScript? | By Ahmed Belaid

When you’re new to something, you usually search for definitions and end up on Wikipedia. In the case of JavaScript, you might end up with more questions than you came in with! Because it is the language of many, many things.

Beyond doubt, even for experienced developers, it’s nice to stop for a second and remember what are the tools you’re using and why you’re using them.

Today, the most popular and used programming language is JavaScript. According to the 2020 Stack Overflow developer insights, JavaScript is the crown jewel of programming languages in terms of popularity, because of its performance and omnipresence.

In fact, most of the functions and applications that make the Internet indispensable to modern life are coded in some form of JavaScript.

It is true that the primary use of JavaScript might still be for frontend web development but now it’s doing so much more than that thanks to the arrival of Node.js — this JavaScript runtime is a popular tool to power web servers. This means that JavaScript developers can use Node.js to write both client-side and server-side code in JavaScript, without relying on external web servers.

Moreover, back in time, you would need other languages to develop great mobile applications, like Objective-C for iOS or Java for Android. It’s now much easier than ever using JavaScript to connect to mobile APIs though. This means that you can use mobile devices features, such as localization or camera to build JS-powered apps.

Once again, this opened mobile app development to a more significant number of developers who no longer need to learn a new language to start their career…it can simply do anything.

As a matter of fact, choosing it as your primary programming language leaves you open to switch to whichever platform :

• Frontend (Browsers).
• Backend (Node, Deno).
• Android/iOS (React Native, NativeScript).
• Desktop (Electron).
• Hybrid (Ionic).

As we can see, JavaScript always makes it come to life! it helps get things done by letting the developer focus on solving the problem and letting developers use a mix of plugins and their own code snippets to get an application working. Furthermore, it has the potential to tap into so many popular industries like Machine Learning and Data Analysis, where Python still rules the game. It’s even happening now with tools like TensorFlow.js!

We can’t forget about its package managers that are simple to use and intuitive which makes it easier to share code between developers. In other words, using a package in a project gives us some advantages like faster development, access to new, regular updates, and better security than custom, it is extremely useful as they are tools that automatically handle the dependencies of the project.

It is safe to say now that JavaScript is here to stay, and rule the industry this decade thanks to its flexibility and dynamicity, and at this time, it's hard to beat.

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