Javascript is unarguably one of the most important programming languages in today’s world. In the very beginning, the name was not “ JAVASCRIPT”. It was “LIVE SCRIPT”. Javascript was mainly used to convert a static page( made by HTML, CSS) to a live page and add functionalities to it.
Later on, with the popularity of JAVA, the name has been changed to “Java Script”. But there are significant differences between JAVA and JAVASCRIPT.
Javascript code is executed by a special program called JAVASCRIPT ENGINE, which is generally embedded in any of the web browsers, as an inbuilt tool.
e.g.
- Google Chrome has Javascript V8 Engine in-built
- Firefox has Spider Monkey
In the last ten years, Javascript has gone through many revolutions and this language has been taken much seriously by programmers World Wide. Hundreds and thousands of libraries have been published and the contribution is on. Every day new things are coming up in Javascript.
But after the invention of Node JS by Ryan Dahl in 2012, the scope of Java Script has expanded from just as a client-side language to a Server-side programming language to create API, Socket programming and has been well accepted as a scripting language to create Asynchronous( Non-blocking ) Single-threaded applications.
Other than Web UI development and Server Side Devtelopment, Jvascript can aslo be used to create
- Mobile Applications
- Programming with Microcontrollers
- SmartWatch Apps
- Artificial Intelligence application Development
Features of JavaScript :
- Javascript is a high-level programming language, which comes with a variety of wonderful constructs for creating variables. It takes care of memory allocation and garbage collection
- It’s not a Strongly Typed language
- Javascript gets compiled by Javascript compilers embedded in a web browser e.g. Google Chrome
- Javascript support multi-paradigm programming approach e.g. Object-oriented as well as a purely functional approach