When the JavaScript programming language appeared in 1995, one of its primary tasks was checking the user input. Before that, this was a job for the server-side languages like Perl. The reason behind the developing this new technology was the intention to reduce the number of server requests. You can imagine how painful it was to send a request to a server intending to validate the inserted data every time a user submits a filled form.
But time doesn’t stand still and from a simple specialized tool, JavaScript became an important component of every popular web browser. It’s so important for the internet that even the browsers for mobile devices and special applications for people with disabilities support it. It controls the way of our interaction with the web content. JavaScript has become a full-fledged programming language that supports such features as lambda functions and even the metaprogramming. Moreover, its habitat is no longer limited to the browsers of any kind. It’s possible to use JavaScript for mobile development and build mobile applications that work like the native ones.
Why JavaScript is Important for Your Business
Let’s talk about the significant strong sides of using JavaScript as one of the parts of your stack of technologies.
Foremost, JavaScript development workflow with the right approach can decrease the amount of time that you spend on development and deployment. For example, using the runtime environment called Node.js allows your front-end developers use JavaScript to handle both client-side and server-side parts of your project. Thus, there’s no need to hire a large team of developers of different specializations, diverse the development team, and spend extra time and resources to adjust the communication and coordination between them. As a result, a smaller team can build JavaScript application faster than using the traditional approach.
Over the past years, we witnessed the explosive growth of information, mobile devices of different shapes and sizes and, consequently, the ability to consume goods and services from anywhere in the world. That’s why the pace of building mobile web applications increases from year to year. This trend meets the needs of users for user-friendly and responsive mobile apps. And, once again, JavaScript is here to help you gain market share. It’s hard to imagine that somebody starts his own business without creating a website that helps everybody around the world to get access to the provided services. That means that the working team already includes an experienced web developer who knows how to get the most from JavaScript and HTML5. If you plan to create a mobile application that almost certainly will increase the number of consumers, you can use the skills of this web developer for creating a hybrid mobile application. No need to hire additional developers, and no need to waste extra time. Just learn some new development approaches and ready to go. As simple as that.
Don’t forget about the need to build responsive web applications and the ability to extend the existing functionality. There is a vast number of available JavaScript libraries that implement different functionality from the creation of server-side applications to the tools that help develop simple, responsive, and minimalist single page applications. All you need to do is to define the type of web app which corresponds to your needs and choose the proper library.
In the case of a business project, it’s crucial to think ahead, and always remember how important the long-term perspective is. That’s why, before making a bid on JavaScript or any other technology, you should make sure it does not lose its relevance.
A Few Words about the Current State of JavaScript
The more available modules and libraries exist the more agile and adaptive your development strategy is. The large and diverse ecosystem is the key factor that distinguishes the wide-spread and successful programming language from all the others. We’ve mentioned Node.js earlier. The chart that you can see below shows how much Node.js modules are available for usage. As you can notice it shows clean and stable growth from year to year comparing to the other popular technologies. This data was obtained from Modulecounts.com where you can check the current state of affairs whenever you want.
One should not forget about the number of libraries and the overall popularity level of the programming language. GitHub, a popular web-based repository hosting service, has recently shared the data that represents the change in rank of languages since 2008 to 2015. The chart below shows that JavaScript has a leading position since 2013.
Conclusions
There’s a definite growing trend in the world of JavaScript nowadays. And you shouldn’t ignore this trend.
The ability to use a single programming language for different purposes such as front-end development, the creation of server-side applications, and hybrid mobile apps is one of the main advantages of JavaScript. There’s a lot of free and open-source libraries, so you can always found the better way to get your goals either you want to add drag-and-drop functionality to your website or create a colorful chart. The large and supportive community of JavaScript developers can be very useful at your first steps. Taking the above into account, we can conclude that the skillful use of this technology can help you decrease the costs of development and develop faster.