DEBUNKING MAJOR JAVASCRIPT MYTHS
There are tons of myths surrounding JS in the web developer community. These myths typically come from the beginner developers or the js developers themselves with less knowledge of its ecosystem.
Although there are some real concerns about using javascript in enterprise level development, myths and concerns are totally different things. The purpose of this article is to bust the myths surrounding Javascript and its capabilities.
1. JS is only the client side web development language
JS has been specially made for client-side web development for adding interactivity to the websites
But its just the story of the past. With Node JS and rise of popularity of so many back-end frameworks, JS is accessible in both backend and frontend development. Although this might not be the myth a few years ago, its clearly the myth now.
2. JS applications are hard to manage
Because of its inherent nature, JS seems like an unmanageable platform.
Unlike Java and .NET which has predefined management structure without any significant pain, JS has been difficult to manage language for a long time.
Different scripts scattered all across an application has given a javascript really bad reputation for development of bigger projects. But in recent days it has completely been changed. With the development of so many frameworks based on different architectural patterns, JS based application can be managed with good structure.
Although it might not be similar to these traditional and statically typed language its very versatile and you can easily implement any architectural pattern of your choice.
3. JS is only for web development
It might not be the myth a few years ago but after the widespread adaptation of node and js in a different ecosystem, it is certainly the myth. In our previous post, we have talked about the different ways to use javascript.
We can now use JS on almost any kind of application development from frontend-backend, desktop, mobile, games, and even embedded systems. Based on it we can firmly say that JS is a great multi-stack development tool.
4. JavaScript is buggy and inconsistent
Although lots of the things in JS makes a developer confused sometimes we can’t say its a buggy and inconsistent for that. JS is based on the ECMA standard and all the engines and browsers which runs javascript adhere to this standard hence reducing the language related issues.
Even though JS engines have lots of differences on their implementation making it really harder for developers to have a seamless cross-browser experience, it’s not so common because of wide adaptability of latest standard in all popular browsers and runtimes. And it’s not inherently the fault of language itself.
5. JavaScript is not object-orientated
Not having a class keyword in javascript might make a lot of beginner developer suspect that it is not an object-oriented language. Some might even say its a functional language. Although JS does not provides traditional class based inheritance and other oop related features it offers prototypical inheritance. You can easily extend the existing class by adding and updating existing methods in the prototype.’
Even more, everything in javascript is an object including functions ,array and all data types. Passing functions as an argument in other languages are so painful but its not in the case of JS. In javascript, we can be very expressive to the code we write.
With ES6 we can even write JS methods with the class keyword which provided clean syntatical sugar for traditional functions. Hence we can conclude that even though it seems like a non Object oriented language it certainly is.
5. JS is the best language for beginner developers
Because of no need to install any tools to start development and easy deployment of projects javascript might seem the best choice for beginner developers. It is obviously a good choice for those who want to become a developer as a hobby.
But if you are considering your development career in the long run and want to be a good programmer , beginning with javascript might limit you from lots of fundamental programming concepts available in most of the other languages.JS is not well structured and if not properly guided beginners might lost in the way and progressing is really really hard this way.
My preference for the developers who want to be the developer for the long run and want to understand it from the core level you should begin with C or python.Starting with C enables you to understand lots of concepts which are common in most of the programming language not available in JS.
6. Hosting JS based applications is expensive
As PHP is the most common web development language in the world most of the web hosting and server is dedicated for hosting PHP based application. Hosting JS based application requires custom cloud servers with the capability to run node/some vps with shell access
. Even though its expensive and not so easy as compared to traditional cloud hosting its easy to manage and you application could have more power and flexibility. As real time application development is the major choice for jS developers , hosting in cloud provided an extra boost in performance .
There are some hosting platforms such as Vultr, Linode, Digital Ocean, Apache openshift,heroku etc which provide cloud servers in very effective rate. Hosting basic applications in heroku is totally free even for production.
Based on these we can say that hosting the JS based application is not so expensive all the way.
7. Learning JS is Hard
Because of not having some organized structure JS might seem like a really difficult language to learn for a beginner. It might be true in some sense but because of the availability of lots of online learning resources , Learning JS is not so hard as many have thought.
Tons of interactive sites are available in the internet specially made for running and testing JS without having to install anything. You can even run your javascript code everywhere by using console embedded in web browsers.
These are some of the myths surrounding javascript and we have tried to explain that in a simple way. Although JS is not free from some of the major fallbacks its still the great choice for development if you learned to used it correctly and exploit its true powers.
Its seems really confusing at first but with practise and more use you will love its elegance and potential.
Thanks for reading this article.
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