Seven Benefits of Using JavaScript

With over twenty years of development behind it, JavaScript is one of the easiest languages to learn. There are lots of resources out there for new developers and the language has benefited from several improvements over the years.

Of the developers who participated in the State of JavaScript Survey, most ‘strongly agree’ that they would like JavaScript to be their main programming language.
JavaScript has serious momentum behind it, with many spin-off tools and frameworks to keep it updated and make it even easier to use. Its widespread use across web development applications means that it’s always a good choice for most projects.

From extensions for Microsoft Office to highly-functioning mobile applications, JavaScript is a language that benefits from the best of the past and the future. As an event-based programming language, latency is low, which means code is loaded at high speeds. The many browser debugging tools available like Postman, make JavaScript code easy to debug. Regular updates are made every year to improve it and it can be run alongside other programming languages.

JavaScript can be used for front-end development so tasks are reusable and protected from changes in the server. Because JavaScript operates on the client-side, applications can still be used offline. As an established programming language, there are lots of free resources on how to use JavaScript.

Developers who use JavaScript benefit from offline support, which is a significant reason to choose it over other web coding languages. Because JavaScript operates entirely on the client-side, websites and apps can still be responsive without an Internet connection.

Because applications use locally cached data, JavaScript enables apps to refresh until an Internet connection is re-established. This happens through Service Workers, which run in the background of a website even if the page is closed.

JavaScript can help developers build apps that are more like the ‘native’ applications that come with a smartphone, increasing their speed and responsiveness.

Regardless of how back-end code is written, JavaScript can be used for front-end development. This enables developers to choose the best language for the back-end without compromising what’s happening in the front.

Using JavaScript for front-end development means that tasks are reusable and are protected from changes in the server landscape. It’s easy to test performance on different platforms to make sure the code works as it should.

JavaScript is a great catch-all choice for projects that need building from scratch.

One of the biggest advantages of using JavaScript is that it can be used in applications that were originally written in other languages. It’s easy to add extra features to an existing site using JavaScript code.

Any browser that has JavaScript enabled can run the code, even if it’s used inside scripts that have been written in different languages like PHP or Perl. This interoperability means that developers with knowledge of JavaScript can pick up any website project and start work on it straight away.

JavaScript relies on a specification called ECMAScript, which standardizes the language and adds new features to make it even easier to use. ECMA International, the organization that created ECMAScript, commits to bringing out regular updates every year to improve how the language works.

One of the most significant updates was in 2015, which added an extensive list of new features. These included additional syntax for writing complicated applications, Python-style generators, typed arrays and template literals. The ninth edition was released in the summer of 2018, giving the language useful attributes like rest/spread properties and asynchronous iteration.

With this continued support, JavaScript is a language that will continue to adapt and improve as time goes on, so developers don’t have to worry about it becoming outdated.

Developers need to continually test their code to make sure it’s error free. JavaScript offers several useful browser debugging tools to make the process easier such as React Developer tools for Chrome, Node.js Inspector, Postman and JS Bin.

These tools enable developers to test their code step-by-step or to implement conditional debugging to get a better sense of where the errors might be. JavaScript ensures that errors can be found and resolved quickly. For example, Postman is great for troubleshooting requests and responses by enabling developers to customize transactions that can then be set up in the application.

So, what is it about JavaScript that makes it such a popular programming language? We’ve put together a list of its top seven benefits:

One of the biggest challenges web developers face is reducing network latency (i.e. how long it takes a request from a site to reach the server and be answered). According to a Google study, 53% of visitors to mobile websites leave the site if it takes more than three seconds to load. JavaScript avoids a lot of the headaches associated with page load speed by being a naturally very fast language.

It doesn’t require any compiling and the code is executed on the client side, which means processing can happen almost instantly as there’s no need to communicate with the server. It can also do more with fewer bytes, which eradicates a lot of the waiting time for users and developers.

JavaScript is an event-based programming language, which means that the entirety of the site’s code isn’t all loaded at the same time. Instead, it happens as required by the user’s activity. For example, the code needed to play a video won’t initialize until the video is actually played, so the time required to load the page is reduced.

According to the 2019 Global Technical Hiring and Skills Report from DevSkiller, 70% of companies are looking to hire programmers who can write JavaScript, and many resort to Javascript development services to fulfill this need.

Since its creation in 1995, JavaScript has become the default programming language of the web – it’s used by 95.1% of all websites.

And GitHub, one of the foremost platforms for the developer community, has consistently found that JavaScript is its most popular language.

So, what is it about JavaScript that makes it such a popular programming language? We’ve put together a list of its top seven benefits: