When to Use JavaScript?

When to use JavaScript?

Based on Stack Overflow most-popular-technologies, JavaScript is nowadays the most popular language in the frontend category. When you enter the JS world, you’ll discover frameworks such as React, Vue, and Angular. Choosing the right framework is a complex topic and I could write another article about it, so I’ll focus on the language as such. Basically, whenever you want to build a web app including custom features or a website with some custom animations, JavaScript will probably fulfill your needs.

Despite not being a low-level language, JS developers aren’t that expensive and it is possible to build an MVP in a few weeks (it depends on how complex your desired features are). Actually, because of its speed, popularity and huge community, JS is an attention-worthy solution for frontend development.

JavaScript is still increasing the number of fans which are constantly developing new and awesome libraries. No matter if you need a fintech or an ecommerce app, there are plenty of libraries to handle rendering charts, formatting the size of files, or even managing and caching your API requests. If you need to build an MVP, you can also use some of the UI libraries with ready-to-use components, which will shorten the time to develop your product.

Whatever libraries you’ll decide to use in your project, keep in mind that it is important to check how often authors update their libraries. Unfortunately, there’s always a risk that third-party libraries will become redundant or outdated. Libraries are meant to make developers‘ life easier but it’s possible to fall into a library hell and install unnecessary dependencies which will slow down your product.

For what else can I use JS?

Against all odds, JS is quite a universal language.

Want a mobile app for Android or iOS? React Native is your choice. It was invented by Facebook (surprise, I know :D) and has been selected by developers to build all Facebook-related apps, such as Instagram or WhatsApp, and even Airbnb which is a beautiful app known for its awesome UX. The advantage of React Native is that you don’t need to waste your time looking for Swift, Objective-C, or Java developers. Just rely on your JavaScript engineer.

Maybe you have some awesome ideas for a native desktop app? Electron with Next.js will probably be perfect for you. But “who actually uses Electron,” you might ask. If you know the IT industry, you probably know of apps such as VS Code, Slack loved by many companies, or one loved by schools even more during the pandemic – Discord. Guess what? These apps were build using Electron. That’s exactly why I think Electron is trustworthy.

JavaScript is also available on the server-side thanks to Node. With this in mind, you can even build a simple full-stack app with server-side microservices.

Read more:

Why you should (probably) use Typescript

How not to kill a project with bad coding practices?

Data fetching strategies in NextJS