What does one think when they hear the word Javascript? When I first heard of it, I thought it would be a language similar to Java. Although there are some similarities regarding both Java and Javascript, one must treat Javascript as an entirely new programming language with its own quirks.
Whether you think Javascript is a good programming language, or whether you think it is a horrible one, you cannot deny that it is used in real life applications and programs. So, if you are on the edge as to whether or not you should learn Javascript, here are some things I’ve come across during my brief time with Javascript.
As of writing this essay, I may only have around 2 weeks using Javascript, and although I am still familiarizing myself with the language, I must say that it is quite refreshing and easy to digest. I, myself, have experience working with other languages such as Java, C, and C++, and I think Javascript is one of the easier languages to start programming on. Even if you didn’t have any experience with programming, Javascript is a great place to start, and there are websites out there that make it easy to hop right into it, such as freecodecamp.org.
Speaking of freecodecamp, doing the Javascript exercises on the site was my first introduction to basic Javascript and ES6. While working on the basic Javascript exercises, the main thing I noticed was how lenient it was. Javascript doesn’t use all the different data types that Java or C programming uses. In Javascript, you can use ‘var’ to represent an integer, character, or even a string. This makes this much less confusing, and in my opinion, better than using specific data types.
ES6 is where things start to get interesting. ES6 introduces some powerful features that can make your programming life much easier. For example, I was able to use the spread operator, which allowed me to expand an array and copy values to another array.
const arr1 = ['JAN', 'FEB', 'MAR', 'APR', 'MAY'];
let arr2;
(function() {
"use strict";
arr2 = [...arr1]; // spread operator used to copy contents into arr2
})();
console.log(arr2);
Another function that I think is very useful in ES6 are arrow functions as it allows the user to write concise functions. Concatenating two arrays or writing anonymous functions takes less lines of code to write with arrow functions and they simply look better as well.
const concat = (arr1, arr2) => arr1.concat(arr2);
console.log(concat([1, 2], [3, 4, 5])); //returns 1,2,3,4,5
I think it is important for my to get familiarize with all the different tools in Javascript because you will never know when you when they could come in handy.
Did I convince you as too whether or not you should learn Javascript? If not, I should also mention that a lot of today’s websites support Javascript, and it is used in addition with HTML and CSS as one of the core technologies of the web. Javascript is a very versatile language that can be implemented in many ways, and in regard with software engineering, Javascript is a must have skill.