What is JavaScript and How to Set up Your Environment for JavaScript Projects
JavaScript is a scripting language created specifically for the web to aid in running applications in browsers. Again, in the field of app and web development, JavaScript is useful for a variety of tasks.
If you want to command a place in the web and application development space, one of the simplest and most powerful languages you should learn is Javascript. It is one of the easiest languages anyone can get started with. It is also one of the most versatile languages that work on different devices.
Overview
JavaScript, an idea and invention of Brendan Eich in 1995, became an ECMA standard in 1997 after Netscape 2 developed it.
JavaScript continued to be an underdog among other programming languages until after the launch of Google’s V8 JavaScript engine. As a result, JavaScript became a language for creating complex web browser applications.
Additionally, Ryan Dahl promoted JavaScript as a leading language after releasing the cross-platform, open-source tool Node.js. This helped it evolve into a flexible language, enabling you to create code for browsers, servers, mobile apps, and desktop programs.
Note: An inexperienced or newbie programmer can get started with JavaScript because it is a straightforward language. So we use a straightforward and practical approach to make learning easier in this JavaScript tutorial. Consequently, this will be more of an introductory course that focuses on helping students understand JavaScript and its constructs.
To better prepare for the task at hand, it might be time to comprehend why you are learning javascript in the first place.
Why Should I Learn Javascript?
You should learn JavaScript as your first language for many fascinating reasons. Aside from being one of the most widely spoken languages in the world, this language opens up job opportunities.
The integration of JavaScript by top companies like Google, PayPal, Microsoft, Netflix, Facebook, eBay, and Linked In explains why it is popular.
Other reasons why you should be learning JavaScript include:
1. As a scripting language used in browsers, it serves as the de facto language for the internet.
2. It is simple to learn and has a wealth of libraries and frameworks to make coding enjoyable and less challenging.
3. Javascript makes it simple for you to transition to any other area of programming, including game development, data analysis, and other areas.
4. JavaScript provides you with opportunities to work in prestigious firms because it is a language that the big names in various industries use.
5. It is compatible with various programming languages, including HTML, CSS, and others.
JavaScript Where to
Just as we mentioned above, you can integrate JavaScript with HTML; you can do this by including them in a script tag. And also, you can run JavaScript as a stand-alone language on your IDE.
Note: Generally speaking, learning HTML and CSS should come before JavaScript. This will help you get used to dynamically integrating JavaScript into your web projects at an earlier stage. Nevertheless, you can learn JavaScript without knowing HTML. So let’s get ready to write our first JavaScript code.
Setting up Your Coding Environment to Write Your First JavaScript Code
We will be using VSC as our coding environment throughout these tutorials. So download VS code and also ensure you have chrome or Firefox installed on your computer.
For the first section of this tutorial, we’ll embed our JavaScript files in HTML and write them separately to view the results in the browser. This is meant to assist those who have no prior experience with HTML in getting comfortable with both approaches at this stage of learning.
So you might want to get Node.js on your computer and install it. To ensure installation is successful, open your terminal or command prompt and enter node -v. If the node version information comes up, you are good to go.
I am using the latest version of Node, so if your version is different, this is not a problem. So in the next article, we will write our first code on JavaScript embedding in an HTML document and also as a standalone JavaScript file.
Conclusion
In this article, we learned about JavaScript and why choosing to learn is the best decision as an aspiring web and application developer. In our next article, we will learn how to write a simple JavaScript program. Till then, stay safe.