Introduction
I assume that if you have somehow landed on this page, you are looking for an answer to the following question: why should you learn JavaScript? Right?
As of the time of writing this blog post, the stack overflow developer survey states, “2022 marks JavaScript’s tenth year in a row as the most commonly used programming language.” In fact, according to the 2022 survey, JavaScript comes in the first rank in terms of popularity as 65.36% of the respondents claim that they’ve been using JavaScript for extensive development work over the past year, and they plan to continue using it for the next year. Indeed, this might be a good insight for you to consider learning and using JavaScript for your future career plans.
Continue reading through this article to have a brief overview of JavaScript and to learn more about some reasons for which you might probably start learning JavaScript right away.
History of JavaScript
The early to mid-1990s was a crucial time for the internet. At that time, the internet boomed and big tech companies such as Microsoft and Netscape got involved in the first “browser war”. They both tried to build the most powerful and efficient web browser to steal the show.
In September 1995, a Netscape employee named Brendan Eich was given ten (10) days to build a lightweight scripting language for easier web development. He, in fact, created Mocha, which quickly became known as LiveScript, and later, JavaScript.
What is JavaScript?
If HTML and CSS allow you to create beautiful static web pages, JavaScript is the programming language that allows you to add some life to them. By using JavaScript, also known as JS, your pages become interactive, as they’ll acquire the ability to respond to users’ interactions, display timely content updates, interactive maps, animated graphics, and much more. In other words, JavaScript adds behaviour to static web pages.
Why Should You Learn JavaScript?
I can spend hours and hours talking just about why should you pick JavaScript as your first (or maybe next?) programming language to learn. In fact, there are several reasons that would help justify the choice of choosing JavaScript. I’ve summed up them for you in four main points as follows:
One of the Big Three Pillars of Front-end Web Development
JavaScript is one of the three main technologies besides HTML and CSS used to build web pages. Indeed, according to Web3Techs,
JavaScript is used as a client-side programming language by 98.0% of all websites.
This gives us an insight that JavaScript is almost everywhere on the web. This is due to the fact that JavaScript is able to handle and solve most of the tasks. Its unique nature, various libraries, and several highly popular frameworks are behind the choice of most companies out there to use JavaScript to build their platforms. Therefore, that gives this technology strengths everywhere.
Learn One Thing, Build Almost Everything
Despite the fact that JavaScript was mainly created as a client-side programming language, it can be used beyond web browsers. For frontend web development, JS is the main programming language for many years now. Therefore, the market knew the birth of many popular JavaScript-based frameworks like React, Vue.js , and Svelte just to name a few of them. However, in the early 2000s, big platforms such as Facebook and Google began using JS for their backend development. Since that time, JS has been also known as a server-side programming language. Thus, it’s used for servers by means of cross-platform runtime like Node.js and Deno. Not only that but JavaScript has unlocked its power. It is in fact also used for mobile development, desktop apps, virtual reality, gaming, and even contributing to the world of the internet of things (IoT).
Get hired
JavaScript developers are both in-demand and well-paid. In their 2022 report, DevSKiller, the top paired IT skills companies are looking after are HTML & JavaScript. Moreover, still according to DevSKiller, software development continues to be a promising career for many new developers. In fact, companies are seeking junior JavaScript developers (34.8%) more than any other level of proficiency. Additionally, as reported by Payscale, the average Javascript developer salary is $87k per year or $30.90 per hour. Here’s a map that shows what JS developers are earning around the world in 2022.
Easy To Learn
I intentionally kept this point for last. I think that claiming that JavaScript is easy to learn can be quite subjective. In fact, based on my experience, JavaScript has a simple syntax. This makes it not difficult to grasp compared to other programming languages such as C++, Ruby, PHP and others. Furthermore, I think that the size of the community can play a crucial role in the learning journey. The large JavaScript community which is estimated at around 12.4 million might help you to find answers to your questions quite easily and quickly.
Conclusion
When it comes to getting into whether programming or web development, learning JavaScript might be a wise decision. Indeed, besides the fact that JavaScript allows you to do almost everything in many fields, it’s valuable in the market. Many companies nowadays are looking for JavaScript developers all the time.
If you don’t know where to start, I have an intuitive-ready course for you to learn modern vanilla JavaScript from the ground up. What are you waiting for?
If you have any questions, please, make sure to use the comment section below and I’ll try to answer them as soon as possible 🙂