The Definition of JavaScript
Are looking for a brief definition of JavaScript? Then this article is for you. Here you’ll learn a high-level definition of JavaScript, its features, and its limitations. So, let’s begin!
The Definition
JavaScript is a scripting language that helps you implement complex features during web page development. This programming language conforms to the ECMAScript specifications. So what’s ECMAScript? ECMAScript is a general-purpose coding language designed by Brenden Eich of Ecma International.
Besides CSS and HTML, JavaScript or JS is one of the primary technologies of the WWW or World Wide Web. More than 97% of the websites around the world use JS for client-side web development. Third-party libraries are often included too. Most of the web browsers available today have a JavaScript engine. The JS engine helps in executing the users’ device code.
JS engines were actually used in web browsers, however, they are the core components of many software systems, such as servers and various other applications.
Side Note: JavaScript and Java may have similarities in names, syntaxes, and programming libraries used, but these two languages differ greatly in design.
Basic Features of JavaScript
The features of JavaScript are as follows.
High-Level Language
JS is a high-level programming language. A lot of user experience boosters and functionalities are provided by JavaScript. It’s a robust language that runs the web virtually on various types of web browsers. It also provides great flexibility, in terms of functions as objects, etc.
Just-in-time Compilation
Just-in-time or JIT compilation is the code execution process where code compilation happens at the run time. This may involve source code translation, but mainly bytecode translation to machine code takes pace, and it’s executed directly. A system implementing a Just-in-time compiler continuously analyses the code being executed.
Multi-Paradigm
JavaScript supports functional, event-driven, and imperative programming styles. These qualities make JS a multi-paradigm programming language. Also, it has APIs or Application Programming Interfaces that enable JS to work with dates, text, standard data structures, regular expressions, and the DOM or Document Object Model.
Curly-Bracket Syntaxes
Curly-brace or curly-bracket coding languages include a syntax with statement blocks using { and }. This style of syntax was popularized by the C language. Besides JavaScript, other curly-brace programming languages influenced by C include R, Rust, C++, PHP, D, E, and many more.
Dynamically Typed
This means JavaScript doesn’t need the explicit variable declaration before they’re used. You can dynamically change a variable used in JS.
Limitations of JavaScript
In spite of being a high-level language, JS has some limitations. The areas where JS lacks are:
- JS can’t be used in networking applications. No such support is included in JavaScript.
- JavaScript doesn’t include multi-processor or multi-threading capabilities.
- Client-side JavaScript doesn’t let you read or write files. This is due to security reasons.
