What Programming Language Should I Learn For Web Development?

What programming language should I learn for web development? There are many languages, and it is hard to know where to start.

You can build a website solely with HTML. However, if you only utilize HTML, you only get a static site, and it will not be interesting at all and lack functionality. For example, If you are only making a marketing site with no functionality, you can use HTML and CSS to make it look pretty.

I want to talk to you about my experience, the pros and cons, and the next steps you can take with JavaScript.

My Experience

I love web development, and there is one programming language that stands out and performs the best when you are making websites.

To make these applications, you need to use Javascript.

I used HTML and CSS to make static marketing websites early at the bootcamp I went too. However, there comes the point in your web development career where you must create functional applications.

Nearly all my projects on Github are written in JavaScript.

What is Javascript?

Javascript is used by 98.8% of websites, making it the default language of many web pages.

As you can see from the chart, Javascript and HTML, and CSS are the most popular web tools.

Pros

Ease of Use/High-level

One of the giant pros of JavaScript is that it is easy to use compared to low-level languages. JavaScript is a high-level language, meaning more human-readable. You don’t have to deal with registers, memory addresses, and call stacks like you do in lower-level machine languages like C or even lower-level Assembly.

You don’t have to deal with low-level logic, and a higher-level language like JavaScript abstracts away some of that logic. This leads to more efficiency and faster development time due to the lower learning curve.

Server side

Before 2009, JavaScript couldn’t run on the server, which means you could save data to a database. You had to use other languages, like PHP, to handle the server side.

However, now you can use JavaScript to write server-side code with Node.js.

The V8 engine runs Node.js, so it has a speedy compiling time. Because of this speed, Node and its most popular framework, Express, are becoming more popular yearly.

Consistency among Client Side and Server Side

I love that you don’t have to learn another server-side language for web development. You can use JavaScript for the front-end and back-end. How cool is that?

I have written a lot of projects with JavaScript and Node. It is great because you don’t have to learn another language’s syntax.

Mimicking Classes from Other Languages

One of the drawbacks of JavaScript was that it didn’t have classes, which made inheritance harder. But, as of 2015, with ECMAScript 6, classes were introduced that made inheritance easier. Classes are ‘syntactical sugar’ for making Objects in JavaScript.

class Dog extends Animal {
  constructor(name) {
    super(name);
  }

  speak() {
    console.log(`${this.name} barks!`);
  }
}

class Cat extends Animal {
  constructor(name) {
    super(name);
  }

  speak() {
    console.log(`${this.name} Meows!`);
  }
}

Wow, that is simple. Before classes were introduced, you had to add methods to the prototype, and if you wanted to utilize inheritance, you had to use the call, bind, or apply method. This leads to the code becoming more understandable.

Screen Shot: BloomTech Training Kit

Big Community

Since JavaScript is becoming increasingly popular, there is a giant community. If you use JavaScript for your project and have a question, you can search for the answer on Stack Overflow, a developer’s question/answer forum site.

The chances are that many people have run into the problem you are facing.

Cons

Client-Side Security

JavaScript is viewable to anyone. Just open your developer tools and go to the sources tab.

JavaScript Can Be Disabled

Did you know in your web browser, you can disable JavaScrip? I wouldn’t recommend doing that. JavaScript gives interactivity to a website.

JavaScript code is written to create fantastic animations, submit forms, menu dropdowns, and other website interactions.

Many of you are probably wondering why you would disable JavaScript.

Why do Users Disable JavaScript?

Cookies

Mhmm…I love chocolate chip cookies. No, not those types of cookies. The web developer sets cookies in JavaScript that handle information about you, and it is not personal information, so please don’t worry. Cookies can store information about what website you go to, login information, preferences, etc.

Security

There are bad people out there that like to do some shady stuff. Developers use JavaScript to write malicious code that can cause your computer to have problems.

Why Shouldn’t Users Disable JavaScript?

Media

If JavaScript is disabled, you can’t view images, video, graphics, and maps. A website is no longer pretty. This can also lead to a website being difficult to read.

Usability

Some sites do not work without JavaScript. What would you do without Youtube? Images no longer work.

The web is run on JavaScript. A lot of people do not go through the hassle of disabling it.

 

Weakly Typed

Weakly typed means you don’t have to declare the type of data the variable store. While this saves some typing, it is a massive headache.

I have encountered writing code that leads to many Type errors. The example up above is contrived. Why can’t you add the two? Well, you can’t add a number and a string. It is easy to forget the type of variables when you write a lot of code.

Fortunately, JavaScript has TypeScript, a subset that transcompiles into JavaScript. Finally, the type headache is over because, in TypeScript, you have to declare your type when you store data in a variable.

function greet(name: string) {
  return `Hello, ${name}!`;
}

The above code is done in TypeScript. You can see that the parameter has to be a string. In JavaScript, the same code is written.

function greet(name) {
  return `Hello, ${name}!`;
}

Although it may be self-explanatory that you need to have a string here, TypeScript doesn’t leave you guessing the data type.

Next Steps

These technologies definitely are exciting.

Learn These Technologies at Codecademy

Thank you for reading my post. Leave your comments below to participate in this engaging community. Be sure to sign up to receive updates of more incredible articles.