Introduction to JavaScript

JavaScript, commonly abbreviated as JS, is a programming language focused on web development.

JavaScript Description

JavaScript is a multi-purpose, multi-paradigm, interpreted programming language.

It is extensively used on web development as a programming language for the front-end and back-end functionality.

When building a websites, there are different technologies involved and each one has a function. A summary of these technologies and its place for JavaScript is described below:

HTML defines what are the components within a page
CSS defines how the components look like
JavaScript (or any alternative front-end and back-end programming languages) defines how these components react to user interaction

Apart from websites, desktop and mobile applications can also be created using JavaScript, though it was not its original purpose, through the use of frameworks.

Desktop app frameworks for JavaScript:

Electron
Tauri
nw.js.

Mobile app frameworks for JavaScript:

Capacitor

JavaScript is interpreted, i.e., it is real-time compiled. Modern web browsers are able to render HTML 5 code (including JavaScript) locally and display the web with all its functionality to the user.

JavaScript Components

ECMAScript, sometimes abbreviated as ES, is a standard for scripting languages, including JavaScript, JScript, and ActionScript.

ECMAScript is standardized through the organization Ecma International in the document ECMA-262. You can read the latest version of this document on this external link.

Web browsers expect that JavaScript used follows the ECMAScript standard.

There are different versions of ECMAScript standard. One of the major changes was introduced in 2015, so all these modern ECMAScript versions are colloquially referred as JavaScript ES201x or ES201*.

To ensure backwards compatibility, JavaScript written using ES201x standards (“next-gen”) can be downgraded to a more universal ECMAScript version (“browser-compatible”).

Babel is a JavaScript compiler to convert ES201x to a previous ECMAScript version.

You can find more information about Babel on this external link.

JavaScript Context

JavaScript was originally developed by Brendan Eich, while he was working at Netscape. It was first release in 1995.

As of 2023, JavaScript is maintained by ECMA.

The JavaScript trademark is owned by Oracle.

JavaScript IDEs

JavaScript IDEs:

Visual Studio Code
WebStorm
Sublime Text

JavaScript Documentation and References

You can find the JavaScript entry at Mozilla Developer Network on this external link.

Learning JavaScript

You can find learning resources for JavaScript on Mozilla Developer Network on this external link.

You can read this article about source code repositories to master JavaScript on this external link.

External references

Mozilla Developer Network; “JavaScript“; Mozilla Developer Network
Ecma International; “ECMA-262“; Ecma International
Babel; “Babel“; Babel
Learning
- Sumit Saraubh; “10 GitHub repositories to achieve JavaScript mastery“; dev.to/novu