The Power of Javascript
If you use a website or smartphone, chances are you have experienced the power of javascript. It makes webpages more dynamic and interactive, providing a smoother user experience that can boost brand loyalty. And it can be used in all types of applications, from web development to mobile apps.
First developed for Netscape Navigator in 1995, javascript is one of the world’s most popular programming languages. It is often paired with hypertext markup language (HTML) and cascading style sheets (CSS) to create websites and applications. Unlike most other programming languages, javascript is designed to run in your browser directly.
In addition to its versatility, javascript is simple to learn and execute. It is also fast, compared to other languages, and its structure allows for efficient error correction. It can also be compiled during execution, which further increases performance. Finally, javascript can easily work with APIs and other languages.
As the most widely-adopted front-end language, javascript is used by websites and apps of all kinds to add animations, search bars, buttons, chat widgets, and other features to pages. It is also used to provide real-time updates, such as stock or crypto prices or news tickers, without reloading the entire page.
Most of these features are created with jQuery, which is an extension of javascript that allows for the creation of advanced user interfaces (UI). For example, a user can click on a button to execute code that prepares the data in a form or calculates a total for an order.
Javascript can even handle complex tasks such as recursive functions and loops, as well as computationally intensive operations, like matrix multiplication. It is also able to access and modify HTML and CSS on the page via the document object model API.
When designing a website, developers must be aware of how javascript works with the DOM to avoid errors. For instance, if javascript is loaded after a certain element in the DOM, it may be unable to access that element because the browser interpreter has not yet interpreted it. In such a case, an error will be encountered.
Originally called LiveScript, javascript was renamed in 1998 after Java’s popularity, positioning it as the “Java’s little brother.” While it is considered high-level, meaning that it abstracts the machine’s bare-metal hardware, it is not fully object-oriented. It uses a combination of interpreted and compiled code, with a special technique known as Just-in-Time compilation that optimizes the process.