JavaScript can do many incredible things. You can use JavaScript to build:
- Websites
- Mobile applications
- Desktop applications
Websites
You can build a website with HTML and CSS alone. But if you want your website to do more things than just displaying information, you will need to use JavaScript.
In JavaScript, you can make your website to be more interactive, meaning users who visit your websites can see and do all sorts of things such as:
- Add animations to the web page.
- Open the drop-down menu on mobile screens.
- Play video and audio on a web page
- Create and submit an input form.
- Create, update, and remove the user posts.
- Create a user account
- Send and request the data to the servers and databases.
- And much, much more!
Mobile applications
In the past, programmers develop a mobile application using a programming language for a specific platform. For example, Java is used to build Android applications, and Swift is used for building iOS applications.
Today, you can also build mobile applications in JavaScript with the help of a tool called React Native. React Native is a mobile application framework used to create mobile applications for both Android and iOS. With React Native, you can write the code once and run it on both platforms.
Some examples are Facebook, Instagram, Uber Eats, Discord, Pinterest, and Skype. These mobile applications are built using React Native, and it behaves exactly like native ones.
Desktop applications
Nowadays, it is possible to build desktop applications in JavaScript through a tool called Electron. Electron is a free and open-source tool that lets programmers build desktop an application using web development tools.
In other words, If you know HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, you can use Electron to build desktop apps as if it is a website!
Well-known examples of desktop applications built with Electron are Visual Studio Code, Facebook Messanger, Twitch, and Microsoft Teams.
Why it’s worth learning JavaScript?
The reason, why it’s worth learning JavaScript is due to three main reasons:
- It is relatively straightforward to learn when compared to other programming languages.
- JavaScript is so versatile that it can build websites, mobile applications, and desktop applications.
- There is a strong demand for JavaScript programming language in the software engineering industry.
Because of these reasons, picking up JavaScript as a first programming language to learn is a solid choice. If this sounds exciting to you or at least makes you curious enough to try out the programming language, sign up today up and start to learn JavaScript!