According to the latest usage statistics posted on W3Techs.com, 93% of all websites currently use JavaScript as a client-side programming language. The statistics indicate the massive popularity of JavaScript among modern web developers. A large number of developers even prefer writing server-side applications and real-time applications in JavaScript through an open source runtime environment like Node.js. At the same time, JavaScript along with HTML5 and CSS3 has become an integral part of responsive web design. But it is also important for the beginners to understand some of the important benefits of using JavaScript.

Why Many Web Developers Prefer JavaScript to Other Programming Languages?

Makes Websites More Responsive
Many surveys indicate that a large percentage of modern people access websites on their mobile devices. So businesses require web developers to adopt responsive web design to make a website look good and deliver richer user experience across desktops, smartphones, tablets and phablets. The programmer can use HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript together to optimize the website’s accessibility, usability and user experience across many devices.

Reduces Web Server Overheads
Unlike other web programming languages, JavaScript is a client-side programming languages. The code written in JavaScript is executed on the user’s web browser and processor. Thus, the developers can use the language to reduce the strains or overheads on the web server drastically. They can even write most functionalities of the website in JavaScript to process a large amount of client requests quickly and efficiently.

Executes Code Faster
JavaScript helps programmers to boost a website’s performance and speed by executing the code quickly. For instance, they can use the programming language to validate the input submitted by a user through forms almost instantaneously. As the code is executed on the user’s processor, the user can get feedback without waiting for the response from the server. The faster code execution and interaction will keep the website visitors interested and engaged.

Extends a Website’s Functionality
The developers can take advantage of Greasemonkey and similar third-party extensions to write code snippets in JavaScript. They can simply execute the code snippets to add out-of-box feature and new functionality to the website. The tools further enable programmers to install the scripts on various web pages to make changes to the website content on-the-fly. So each time a user loads the web page, he will see customized website content.

Makes the User Interface More Appealing and Interactive
Nowadays, the user interface and user experience of a website are interrelated. JavaScript enables developers to make the user interface of the website better and more appealing by adding sliders and drag-and-drop components. At the same time, the programmers can easily make the user interface more interactive by taking advantage of JavaScript functions. They can make the interface react to a user each time he hovers the mouse over specific items or activates certain options through keyboard.

Loads of Open Source Tools
The developers can write JavaScript code without using any expensive tools. They can simply use a text editor like Notepad to write longer lines of code in JavaScript. At the same time, they also have option to reduce the coding time significantly by taking advantage of open source frameworks like React, AngularJS, Backbone, Ember, jQuery, Babylon.js and Three.js. These libraries and tools make it easier for programmers to write a variety of web applications in JavaScript within a shorter amount of time.

Option to Use for Server-Side Application Development
The web developers also have option to write both frontend and backend of a website in JavaScript using specialized tools like Node.js. As a cross-platform runtime environment, Node.js enables developers to use JavaScript for developing server-side and networking applications. It further comes with features to facilitate development of real-time applications like games and chats. Hence, many developers take advantage of Node.js to build applications without using any server-side programming language.

New Features and Enhancements in ECMAScript 6
The web developers now have option to use ECMAScript 6, the latest version of JavaScript. ECMAScript 6 comes with several new features classes, modules, generators, module loaders, symbols, Unicode, arrows, and reflect API. These new features will help developers to build robust web applications in JavaScript. However, most web browsers currently do not support the latest version of JavaScript fully.

Simple and Easy to Learn
Its simple syntax rules make it easier for beginners to learn and use JavaScript without putting extra time and effort. The document object model (DOM) provided by the language makes it easier for developers to add functionality to various objects on a web page without writing longer lines of code. The JavaScript developers can further write customized scripts in JavaScript to customize the website according to specific business requirements.

However, the developers must remember that JavaScript is an interpreted programming language. So it lacks some of the features provided by other high-level programming languages. For instance, it does not support multithreading, lacks multiprocessor capability, and does not allow applications to read or write files directly. But the web developers can still take advantage of the features of JavaScript to make the websites more interactive and responsive without putting extra strain of the web server.

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