5 explicit reasons proof why you should keep betting on JavaScript7 min read
Hi, there. If you’ve been following my blog for a while, perhaps you already read one of the articles why you should learn JavaScript by Quincy Larson – freeCodeCamp founder, the place that helps million people learn to code for free every day. However, this article mainly points to JavaScript with respect to the job market. To consolidate the power of JavaScript, I want to write this article to find out its tangible values.
1. The most popular programming language in the world
As the resulted survey in Stack Overflow in 2019 – the largest developer community, they had asked people about what programming languages do developers use. 72,525 people had responded and JavaScript language is on the top with 69.7% for the seventh year in a row, followed by HTML/CSS, SQL, Python, and Java.
With the development of the modern web and its ubiquitous role around the world. JavaScript language comes in crucial and becomes an indispensable part of the web. To create an animation in a web-page, we use JavaScript, to send or respond requests or handle events from the client or server, we use JavaScript. This language is evenly now going beyond the web’s boundary, JavaScript can also help you create the application, mobile app, game application and much more. Simply put, JavaScript is everywhere, everywhere because of it’s versatile. Pure JavaScript or JavaScript’s framework for front-end development, server-side (back-end) we have Node.js, React Native framework to build awesome mobile apps, it works on the Internet of Things Devices, embedded systems, cross-multi platforms applications, big data, etc…JavaScript is and will be only one language that natively supported by all modern browsers, it’s a key that helps you develop the modern application that may change the world.
If you check and do some research on Github – the place that developers build better software, together. The percentage of the pull requests and tag related to JavaScript also is number 1 as it’s in Stack Overflow.
2. JavaScript is easy to learn
Don’t like many other high-level programming languages that have strongly-typed such as C, Pascal, and Java. JavaScript is a dynamic language and easy to learn. When you code JavaScript, you don’t have to run a compiler or interpreter then set up the environment, because the browser will do it for you, which is the reason many beginners love it. This language has clear, readable syntax and vastly improved after version of ECMAScript 2015 or ES6. If you learn this language properly, it just takes you 3 weeks – 1 month to learn the fundamental concepts in JavaScript by go through the curriculum of freeCodeCamp, which I recommend and also CodeCademy and sometimes if you’re free, join some competitive programming contests on CodeForces, CodeSignal, HackkerRank, LeetsCode is a great way to shape your logical and JavaScript’s skills.
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3. Top paying technology, in-demand job
Many people are learning JavaScript, but how many of them can be confident to claim as a “professional JavaScript developer? Because it’s versatile, so to master it is not just in one or two days. Yet, if you could go beyond this obstacle and enhance gradually your JavaScript every day, you will do much better for your coding skills, your job and also your life. As a result of Stack Overflow’s survey, in the US, JavaScript is one of the highest pay programming languages with approximately $110K per year (so huge!). JavaScript can change your life!
Many companies around the world want to seek for the talent JavaScript developers. Typing JavaScript in Indeed.com, you could see a bunch of JavaScript’s jobs are available right now from very diverse roles from front-end to back-end developer, full-stack developer, freelance, remote, etc…With JavaScript, the job outlook is clear and potential, more jobs related to JavaScript will be created as the transition of companies moving their work to the cloud according to the predictions of industry experts.
4. Multiple programming paradigms
JavaScript is a multiple programming paradigm language, which means you can choose your own style and bail on what you want to work with. There are 2 popular programming paradigms they are OOP (Object Oriented Programming) and FP (Functional Programming), JavaScript support both styles. Object-oriented programming (OOP) is a programming paradigm based on the concept of “objects”, which are data structures that contain data, in the form of fields, often known as attributes; and code, in the form of procedures, often known as methods. On the other hand, functional programming is another programming paradigm treats computation as the evaluation of mathematical functions, given the same input always returns the same output, avoids changing state and mutable data.
An example of object-oriented programming paradigm in JavaScript:
function createNewPerson(name) {
var obj = {};
obj.name = name;
obj.greeting = function() {
alert('Hi! I\'m ' + obj.name + '.');
};
return obj;
}
var flop = createNewPerson('Flop Flopian');
flop.name;
flop.greeting();
// When you type these code in the console, you will see: Hi! I'm Flop FlopianAnd this is the demonstrated code for functional programming style in JavaScript:
const x = {
val: 2
};
const x1 = x => Object.assign({}, x, { val: x.val + 1});
const x2 = x => Object.assign({}, x, { val: x.val * 2});
console.log(x1(x2(x)).val); // 5So depends on your style, JavaScript offers you many ways to make you productive. OOP is remarkably much more popular than functional programming, but in recent years, functional programming has been rising as the paradigm that many developers and also professionals choose for their coding styles. Because of the limitation of this article, so I don’t dig deeper into these 2 types of paradigm, I’ll do it later on other articles with topics related to functional programming and also its pros and cons compared with the OOP style.
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5. Learning Resources and Huge Community
JavaScript is a language of the web, easy to learn and so popular. As a consequence, many courses that are related to JavaScript are available with high-quality content. Like I said above, I recommend you should try freeCodeCamp because it’s free and your JavaScript skills will seamlessly improve after building a list of projects from that. Also, I recommend, if you could spend a little money to learn, Codecademy is a great alternative site to learn JavaScript. There are also many others such as MDN web docs, W3schools, TutorialsPoint, etc…Besides courses, there are many books with elegant content such as JavaScript: The Definite Guide, You don’t know JS or Eloquent JavaScript, etc…Going to Bootcamp is another choice, which also is reasonable when you just have to spend 5-6 weeks to learn this language.
Besides, there are many JavaScript communities that leverage you to write JavaScript code better, such as Stack Overflow, dev.to – open source community for web development that is emerging for a couple of years, Codenewbie, #100DaysOfCode, #301DaysOfCode on Twitter and many others. Those are very useful and supportive communities helping you conquer the language of the web!
In this blog, I also write some content in terms of JavaScript such as tutorials, tips, books and free courses available. If you’re interested, you can check it out now:
Conclusion
JavaScript is everywhere, JavaScript plays a pivotal role on the web applications, plenty of jobs are available for JavaScript developers by many different roles from front-end to back-end, full-stack to game development, smart TV, embedded systems, cross-platform applications and many more. Learn JavaScript is easy and fun with many resources out there for free. JavaScript is and will be the dominant language of the web and the job market with an average salary of around $110K per year (in the US).
