In this programming world, the most popular question is: Which programming language should one choose to start their programming career with? As per the survey held in 2017, the most popular programming language being used is none other than JavaScript. So, let’s start learning the most popular programming language by its basics and it’s brief history in this post named as “What is JavaScript? – Introduction and Brief History”.
What is JavaScript? Or How can we define JavaScript?
JavaScript (abbreviated shortly as ‘JS’) is a programming language which is created in the year 1995 mainly to make the web application interactive as well as to run it dynamically. The below features mainly defines JavaScript as a whole:
- High-Level Language: JS provides a high-level or abstracted view of the system.
- Full Fledge Dynamic: JS allows to perform the operations easily at run-time instead of compile time.
- Prototype-based: JS allows Reusing the existing objects served as prototypes.
- Interpreted: Execution of the JS code without pre-compilation (run-time compilation) of the same.
- Versatile: JS allows to create small elements to data-driven applications.
- Flexible and Compact: It is more flexible as a lot of tools has been developed on top of its core features.
Founder of JavaScript: Brendan Eich (Father of JavaScript).
Some important points that best describe JavaScript are:
- JavaScript is one of the core element of the Web Technologies besides HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language as a descriptive language which specifies the structure of the webpage) and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets which provides the public interaction to the web page).
- Initially, JS started its implementation on client-side but now JS engines are embedded with server-side using NodeJs as well as with database using MongoDB. JS has landed it’s foot not only in web-based applications but also in non-web-based applications such as word processors, PDF software, Mobile and desktop based Applications (JS Electron) or on any device containing JavaScript engine. It states that opportunities with JavaScript are endless.
- Although the name of JavaScript contains the name of another programming language i.e. Java. But there is no any relation between Java and JavaScript at all.
- Every browser supports JavaScript language as the browsers contain JavaScript engine popularly known as ‘JavaScript Virtual Machine’ which are enabled by default. For eg, V8 is the JavaScript engine of Google Chrome browser & opera browser, SpiderMonkey is the JavaScript engine of Mozilla Firefox browser, etc.
- Today all the web-based applications use JavaScript as its core features.
Brief History of JavaScript:
- It was created by Brendan Eich in just 10 days in May of 1995 when Eich was working on the project with the first web browser i.e. Netscape Navigator. The web needed something of the sort: easy to grasp syntactically, dynamic, to reduce verbosity, speed up development and powerful.
- It was first named as Mocha, then renamed LiveScript the same year but later again changes to JavaScript (After receiving a Sun Trademark) in order to piggyback off the popularity of Java at that time of its development.
- JavaScript’s competing versions of the languages started emerging. So, JavaScript was eventually taken to ECMA International (Formed in 1961) so that an official standard for the language could be formed.
- Today, the standard versions of JavaScripts are referred as their version number as ECMAScript(ES5 or ES6). Also, it is being referred as their release year as ES2016 or ES2017.
JavaScript Console:
While programming in any of the programming language, it is quite common that the developers may do some mistakes which will result in errors in the scripts. But the errors could not be seen in the browsers by default. So, to see errors and get a lot of other useful information about scripts, browsers have embedded “developer tools” also known as JavaScript console. Developer tools allow us to see errors, run commands, examine variables and much more.
JavaScript Console in Google Chrome: To open JavaScript developer’s tool in google chrome:
- Right-click on the browser and select “inspect”.
- Press Ctrl+Shift+J in windows. (F12 or Ctrl+Shift+I in Linux)
The red line text in the Console window will display the error present in the scripts. The blue color greater than sign (“>”) in the console will allow you to print Strings and execute lines of JavaScript code on the fly, right inside of your browser.
Similarly, the JavaScript console can be opened in Mozilla Firefox (by pressing F12) and any other browser.
Source: Wikipedia
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