Will JavaScript be replaced in the future?
JavaScript is one of the most popular programming languages in the world. It is considered an essential component of web technology along with HTML and CSS. HTML and CSS are used for structuring and styling where JavaScript is used to make the web pages interactive.
Will JavaScript ever be replaced in the future? No, JavaScript will still be dominating in the web for decades to come. JavaScript is so well-established on the web, especially on the client-side, and it is also very popular on server-side with Node.js. With the recent popularity of JavaScript frameworks and libraries, and more logic moved to the client, it doesn’t seem that JavaScript is ever going away.
JavaScript has managed to stay on the top for more than two decades already and developers and industry love it, they use it everywhere, web, mobile, server, even on the Internet of Things (IoT).
In this post, we will share the history of JavaScript and we will also tell you how dominating is JavaScript in web development. We will also share some languages which are considered great alternatives for JavaScript. Without any further ado, let’s get started.
History of JavaScript
JavaScript was never meant to become the most popular programming language, it was developed to become lightweight scripting language for easier programming. It was developed in 1995 and Netscape gave the task to their Employee, Brendan Eich to develop the lightweight scripting language within 10 days.
Brendan Eich developed the new language and named it “Mocha” which was later renamed to “JavaScript”. JavaScript gain the popularity when Netscape was acquired by AOL and they turned over their browser’s code to the famous Mozilla Foundation. Now JavaScript is considered core web technology and it is supported by most popular web browsers like Chrome, Mozilla, Opera, etc.
How dominating is JavaScript?
JavaScript is the most dominating programming language in the world and according to GitHub’s Octoverse 2017, JavaScript is the most popular programming language on the platform with more than 2.3 million pull requests. The second most popular language is Python with 1 million pull requests and 3rd is Java with 986k pull requests.
According to Stack Overflow, which is another very popular programmers’ platform, JavaScript is the most commonly used programming language and JavaScript is retaining this title for the last six years in a row.
According to RedMonk which is an industry analyst company and it pulls the language rankings from popular platforms like GitHub and Stack Overflow and combines their ranking to come up with a ranking which represents the usage and discussion of different languages.
According to RedMonk Programming Language Rankings of January 2018, JavaScript is the number 1 programming language which is widely used around the world.
According to Web3Techs, JavaScript is used by 95% of the websites and it is the most popular client-side language. These surveys and reports show that JavaScript is one of the most popular programming languages in the world and these are the reasons why it is so popular.
- JavaScript is used on both front-end as well as the backend of web development.
- JavaScript is very easy to learn, it has a huge open source community to help you put in case you get stuck.
- JavaScript is the standard and it is supported by all popular browsers like Chrome, Mozilla Firefox etc. It allows you to simply write the code on text editor without having to worry about the code will run on a specific browser or not.
- JavaScript can be coupled with other powerful tools like JSON, AJAX, Nodejs, MongoDB etc.
What is wrong with JavaScript?
JavaScript is a popular programming language but just like other programming languages, there are some issues with it.
- The main problem with the JavaScript is the issues, its code runs on the user’s computer and it can be exploited for malicious purpose.
- If you disable the JavaScript in the browser then it will not run the entire JavaScript code.
- JavaScript files can be accessed on the client machine so anyone can read the code and reuse it.
- JavaScript has loose types. This means when developing code, we can’t easily see if a variable is supposed to be a number or a string. This might lead to runtime errors after the web application is released. Languages that are strongly typed will detect these kinds of errors during development.
- Global variables might cause unexpected behaviors.
- JavaScript hoisting is a concept which isn’t in most other programming languages and can be confusing for people who have experience in other languages.
With JavaScript, there are a lot of traps you can fall into. If you have a solid understanding of the JavaScript language, you can easily avoid those tricky concepts.
With the latest version of ES6 or TypeScript, it is much easier to avoid making mistakes. You also have linters which help you spot mistakes or bad practices in development time.
However, the problems mentioned above is the reason why there are many people disliking the JavaScript language. But are there alternatives?
Can any language replace JavaScript?
In simple words, JavaScript will never be directly replaced as it is well-established in the web but there are alternate programming languages available such as WebAssembly and Typescript.
WebAssembly
WebAssembly is a great Alternative of JavaScript and it is also known as “wasm”. It is a byte-code that can run on browser and programming languages like C++ can be compiled to WebAssembly. Its low-level binary format allows it to load and execute swiftly due to its small size.
Pros
- It is faster than JavaScript.
- It is supported by all major browsers.
- WebAssembly is “Backwards-Compatible”, it is the essential feature of the web.
- WebAssembly improves the full threading support, Zero-cost exceptions, dynamic linking, DOM integration, Multi-process support, and Integrated Garbage collection.
Cons
- WebAssembly is still new and experts have found several bugs in the language which will be fixed with time.
TypeScript
TypeScript is another great alternative of JavaScript and it is also open-source programming language just like JavaScript. It is developed and maintained by Microsoft. It is a superset of JavaScript and all existing JavaScript programs are also valid TypeScript Programs. It can also be used to develop JavaScript applications for both client-side as well as server-side execution.
Pros
- TypeScript has rich IDE support with many useful features.
- Safe Automatic refactorings
- Typos can be detected at compilation time
- Module Support
- Compatible with existing JavaScript code
- Come with Object Oriented programming features
Cons
- TypeScript doesn’t have its own package manager and it would benefit a lot from having a separate package library.
- Compile step is required to transform TypeScript into JavaScript to run the application in the browser.
Will Node.js survive?
If we take a look at other server-side languages we see that most of them have survived the change, PHP is the language which many people hate but still is it one of the most used languages.
Similarly, Node.js will survive and as long as JavaScript is out there, Node.js will be an ideal option for the web developers to use the same language on the backend as well as frontend.
Conclusion
JavaScript is undoubtedly one of the most popular programming languages and it has more than 250k npm packages which are enough for long-term usage. Many experts think that JavaScript popularity will continue to grow and it will be around for decades.
If you want to be a front-end developer, it is a must to gain a solid understanding of the JavaScript language. If you understand the pitfalls and why the language is behaving like it is, you will have a much easier time working as a developer from day to day.
To get a solid understanding of JavaScript, I recommend the Udemy course: JavaScript: Understanding the Weird Parts. As the title says, you will understand the weird part of the JavaScript programming language.
Let us know what you think about the future of JavaScript in the comment section below.
