JavaScript has been called the language of the web because every website you land on, there would be a use of this programing language in a meaningful way to make the web page interactive. Each website has tons of files included. Let us take a basic website as an instance.
Your website is going to serve up in the index.html page and a script.js page. Alright, so the index.html page is serving up HTML, the acronym for HyperText Markup Language to the browser. HTML is the framework of the page which tells the browser, the placement of various items and how to show in terms of initial data like the body, title paragraph, etc. but this HTML page has a lot of limitations because the data displayed would be static. Well, the HTML alone is fine and pretty to look at while providing people with information but do you know what could make it better? In the way, if you want to grab information from a server like a post on Instagram? The answer is JavaScript because HTML alone cannot get the task done. It does not have the power to feature content from another server. It is not built in that manner whereas JavaScript converts this static state into a dynamic one. JavaScript possesses the power to manipulate what is you are looking at on the website but being able to access the HTML’s DOM which is the Document Object Model which is the programmatic sort of data that tells JavaScript what is not only on the page where it is currently the page looks like but it gives access to change things on the page. This DOM information is available through an API whose abbreviation is Application Programming Interface. It is the opening to control some of the things on the HTML page.
JavaScript has loads of potential functions that can be used with it. You can potentially access Instagram programmatically. You can also access a server you are running where you can send in some information and it could reply to you with more information and the work to connect Instagram or any external data service that you need. It can do the work server-side and return it to JavaScript but JavaScript has that functionality in it to access web services process information. It is limited to your creativity of what you want to do with that. You can even create a video game.
Now we are aware that JavaScript is used to help make HTML pages dynamic but where else is it used. It is not limited to the browser there. There exist tons of JavaScript frameworks like BACKBONE.JS, VUE.JS, ANGULARJS, METEOR, etc. A JavaScript framework is a framework that helps people to build apps. It does a lot of ‘heavy lifting’ of an application. Each framework varies. Displaying different components of the app can be very monotonous. The frameworks could help you with that to take the boring element out of it.
Honestly, what would we do without JavaScript? Thanks a trillion, Brendan Eich! We are eternally grateful to you!
