We can define JavaScript in many different ways. But my definition is that it’s a high-level, object-oriented, multi-paradigm programming language. And with that being said, Can we move on to the next lecture thing? Well, probably not. Because what does any of that mean? So let’s reconstruct this just a little bit to at least make some sense out of this.
And starting with the programming language itself, a programming language is just a tool that allows us to write code that will instruct a computer to do something. And of course, that’s our main goal of using JavaScript. Then I go on and say that JavaScript is a high-level language, which means that we don’t have to think about a lot of complex stuff, such as managing the computer’s memory, while it runs our program. So in JavaScript, there are a lot of so-called abstractions over all these small details that we don’t want to worry about. And this makes the language a lot easier to write and to learn.
What is JS definition ?
I say that it is object-oriented. And all means is that the language is mainly based on the concept of objects for storing most kinds of data. And of course, we will talk about Object-oriented programming later. Finally, JavaScript is also a multi-paradigm language
meaning that it’s so flexible and versatile that we can use all kinds of different programming styles, such as imperative and declarative programming. And these different styles are just different ways of structuring our code. Again, you will learn all step by step, This is just the first very high-level overview, but I hope it’s made sense so far.
Now that we know what JavaScript is ?
JavaScript is, at least kind of what is the role that it plays in web development? Or in other words, what do we use it for? And to answer that question,
let’s look at the three core technologies of the web,
HTML, CSS, and of course, JavaScript. So these three technologies all work together to create beautiful interactive and dynamic websites or web applications.
HTML is responsible for the content of the website. So the text, the images, the buttons, and all the contents that you see on a web page is always written in HTML, then the
CSS is responsible for the presentation of the content. So basically, for styling out the elements on a webpage.
JavaScript is the actual programming language of the internet. And it allows developers to add dynamic and interactive effects to any webpage. we use it to manipulate the content or the CSS, load data from remote servers and build entire applications in the browser, which we then call web applications.
We can also use the analogy of, adjectives, and verbs to make the separation of roles a bit easier to understand.
HTML represents the nouns
Saying that the p element is a paragraph. And so paragraph is the noun here. The CSS then is the objective because it describes the noun, like this piece of CSS saying, the paragraph text is red. so here, red is the objective describing the noun. And finally, JavaScript is the verb, like saying, hides the paragraph. so here we are doing something. And so we have a verb. Okay? Does that make sense? Since we’ve been talking a lot about dynamic effects and web applications here, let’s now actually take a look at a real example to make it even more clear what JavaScript is capable of.
Let’s talk about Twitter web application in terms of JavaScript
When you open a profile page. And so I thought that it was a very excellent example. So right off the bat, once you visit you will see two rotating spinners on the page, meaning that JavaScript is probably loading some data from the Twitter service in the background. Then, as the data arrives, JavaScript.
The spinners and instead show us the loaded content. So this is a very excellent example of manipulating styles and content, right. But there are also some more straightforward dynamic effects on this page, like JavaScript showing the tweet box whenever we hit the tweet button and then hiding it as we click outside of that box. And finally, JavaScript also displays this nice user information as we hover our mouse over any user on Twitter.
So a lot of cool stuff is going on Twitter. And it’s all powered by JavaScript. How cool is that? And, by the end of all of our javascript series blog, you will know how to use all of these techniques that we just saw here. I hope that this makes you even more excited about all the content ahead.
Capabilities
Alright, now that we saw what JavaScript is capable of. Let’s quickly recap and also look at other cool stuff that we can build with the power of JavaScript. So as you already know, JavaScript allows us to add dynamic effects to pages and, in fact, to build entire web applications in the browser. These applications feel almost like the apps that we use on our computers and phones every single day. We can say JavaScript is what made modern web development, and really the whole modern web itself, possible in the first place. Now, if you’re already somewhat familiar with the web development industry,
libraries, and frameworks in Javascript
you’ve probably heard of modern JavaScript libraries and frameworks, such as React, Angular, or view, right? And if you didn’t, that’s absolutely basically tools that make writing modern, large-scale web applications a lot easier and faster. really good at JavaScript before learning and using any of these frameworks, and not just jump into your first framework, okay. Also, your library of choice might not always be as popular as it is today. becoming really good at JavaScript because then you can easily learn whatever is popular. So no matter what anyone tells you, learning JavaScript properly is the single best investment that you can make in your web development career right now.
Javascript language and the web browser are actually two separate things
And what that means is that JavaScript can also run outside of web browsers; for example, it’s possible to use JavaScript on a web server using a very popular technology called node js, which doesn’t need any browser at all. And this allows us to create so-called back-end applications, which are simply applications that run on a web server and interact with databases and stuff like that. we create so-called front-end applications. So in this blog, we will learn the ins and outs of the JavaScript language itself. we’re going to be building front-end web applications. And in the future, I might also add a section about Node js at the end of this course so that you can get a sense of how we can use JavaScript outside of the browser environment as well.
Alright, and now just to finish, I want to mention that; we can actually also use JavaScript to build kind of native mobile applications, as well as native desktop applications for any phone and computer operating system out there. the Ionic framework, and tools like an electron. over the last couple of years, making things possible that were never possible before. that you can build after becoming really good at JavaScript, which, if you think about it, is really kind of mind-blowing.
JavaScript releases, or versions
Okay, and now to finish this blog, I want to briefly talk about Javascript releases, or versions, as you might call them.
You have JavaScript releases at this point. It has been a huge update to the language in 2015, which is officially called es 2015. But most people just call it ES6, simply because it was released after ES5. And by the way, i.e., S stands for ACMA script. Now, after ES6 2015, there is now a yearly new release with a couple of new JavaScript features in all of these new releases, or versions, starting from ES6 2015 is what we call modern JavaScript. Well, it’s simply because, in this blog, I’m going to teach you modern JavaScript right from the beginning. However, I’m also convinced that you need to understand what came before ES5 2015. So ES5. . I will help you to understand complete it through my blog so now I no longer want to bore you with theory. So instead, let’s finally get started on our next blog.
Also Read: Top 10 Features Your Landing Page Should Have
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]
