What is JavaScript?
javascript is a programming language that allows you to create interactive websites. It can handle complex features like drop-down menus, form validation, and real time content updates. It also makes web pages more engaging with eye-catching animations and effects. The technology is used by tech giants like Google, Twitter, Facebook, Amazon, and YouTube to give their websites more functionality and make them easier to navigate.
It’s a high level language that doesn’t require you to manage hardware resources such as memory and CPU. It’s also an object-oriented and multiparadigm language, meaning that it supports several paradigms, such as imperative, declarative, functional, and object-oriented. JavaScript is a modern language that supports the latest browser features. It has an extensive set of DOM and API libraries, and it can work with other languages like HTML and CSS. It is a great choice for developing complex websites, as it offers a rich toolbox for creating dynamic content.
In the past, most websites were static—you could find all of their information in one file downloaded to your computer. When you went to a website, it would download the files and then display them on your screen in a specific order. This process was slow and inefficient, but a new technology called AJAX came along to solve this problem. AJAX allowed websites to load data in the background, avoiding page reloads and saving users’ time. AJAX was built on top of a scripting language like JavaScript, and it ushered in a period of innovation for the web.
JavaScript works in web browsers because they literally contain a built-in JavaScript engine that interprets the code and executes it. It can also interact with the Document Object Model (DOM), which is the browser’s internal representation of web pages, allowing it to change content and structure dynamically.
As you might have guessed, javascript is an object-oriented programming language. This means that each element of a program has an object representation, and you can use the methods on this object to perform operations. For example, if you want to add a number to a string, you can use the valueOf method on the string object to do this.
The syntax of javascript is similar to other programming languages. For instance, all statements begin with an opening tag, followed by a statement body and an ending tag. The statement body is optional, but it is recommended that you include it because it helps you keep track of your code.
The way that javascript is executed in a browser is interesting. First, it is parsed by the JavaScript engine and turned into a format that the processor understands, which is often called byte code. The byte code is then translated to machine code by the processor. The resulting executable code is then executed in the browser, bringing the website to life. This is why javascript is so versatile and powerful. It’s a great choice for building robust web applications, as it can interact with other languages, including popular front-end frameworks such as React and Angular.