What Is JavaScript?

Fletcher Rippon@_fletcherrippon

JavaScript or sometimes referred to as JS is a programming language designed to bring interactivity to the client-side of websites by manipulating HTML and CSS on the webpage the DOM (Document Object Model). javaScript is one of the core technologies of the web most websites will use javascript in client-side code.

JavaScript is a high-level multi-paradigm programming language (a language that supports procedural and object-oriented programming). JavaScript is also a dynamically typed language which means that Javascript does not require you to declare types to variables and allows you to change the type of the variable to anything at any time.

As of 2009 the release of nodejs gave JavaScript the ability to run on the server-side and gave endless possibilities to what people can create with JavaScript.

What Can JavaScript Do?

Create Interactive Websites

JavaScript is most commonly used to bring interactivity to web pages by manipulating the DOM (Document Object Model) such as

• Image carousel (image slider)
• Complex web animations
• Accordion dropdowns
• Triggering pop-ups & Hidden content
• Application state management

and lots more

Create API's & Server Side Applications

Javascript is also heavily used to create APIs (Application Programming Interface) an API brings abstraction to your web applications, you can allow others to use your API as a service. APIs are most commonly used to retrieve data from a database in JSON format.

When using JavaScript with a runtime environment like nodejs you can create server-side applications using JavaScript and frameworks like express and fastify.

A few serverside web applications that you can build are

• Blog
• Social media site
• Image minifier/Image compressor
• URL shortener
• file hosting service

Create Web, Mobile & Desktop Applications

JavaScript can only be run in a browser but using nodejs we can run JavaScript on our computers. Using electron allows us to create cross-platform desktop applications using web technologies like JavaScript, HTML, and CSS this also means you can use your favourite UI framework to create desktop apps (React, Vue, Svelte).