Are you considering adding JavaScript to your programming toolkit? If so, you’re likely wondering if JavaScript is worth learning. Is it easy to learn? I will explain, does JavaScript provide more than just a functional language, is it expressive, powerful, or flexible enough? How easy is JavaScript to learn?
What is JavaScript?
The JavaScript language is the most widely used technology in the browser, and is a common programming language on the Web. It is basically a web implementation of ECMAScript.
The popularity of JavaScript is understandable, since it’s a fast, dynamic language that is good at web applications. However, it is not widely known that there are some things that are easy to learn in JavaScript that are not obvious at all. So, if you think you know JavaScript well, do yourself a favor and learn a couple of things that are not easy to pick up right away.
Pros of JavaScript
Now let’s get to the reasons why you might want to learn JavaScript, the advantages of JS.
C-like syntax
The syntax of JavaScript is very similar to C. While there are many modern programming languages with nicer syntax and better structure, the JavaScript language is quite easy to pick up if you already know a C-like language, such as C or Java.
Because of its similarity to C, JavaScript is easy to read, write, and debug. Many programmers don’t realize this, but learning JavaScript is easy when you learn how to apply the ideas you have got.
Popularity
Scripting is a popular technology for HTML applications, and JavaScript is the most commonly used language for scripting. This means that in many cases, you don’t have to worry about language support or which technology you should learn for the sake of web applications.
JavaScript is easy to use
JavaScript is one of the most usable programming languages. Most of the basic concepts of it are easy to grasp. Once you know the basics, JS is easy to use, even in a programming project. You can see JavaScript code and understand it, and you can even write small scripts and see how they work.
Powerful
JavaScript is a full programming language, and it includes the basics of computing as well as advanced features. It has objects, variables, conditionals, and a lot of other powerful programming features. You can also take advantage of the web as a platform with JavaScript.
Cons of JavaScript
We discussed some advantages of JavaScript. Now let’s go ahead to bad things of JS.
Counterintuitive
Sometimes JavaScript behavior is counterintuitive to those unfamiliar with the language. But understanding it makes your programming and debugging much easier. You have to understand how some JavaScript constructs work, and how they interact with the browser to give you some flexibility that you don’t have in other languages.
Interpreted
Every JavaScript program requires an engine, an interpreter installed on client side. In most cases it is a browser. With NodeJS, you can program native apps. But they still require NodeJS runtime installed on client.
By the way, JavaScript, like every other interpreted language is at the same time compiled. The translator (a part of interpreter) reads the source code and compiles (translates) it to the bytecode. Then interpreter executes the bytecode. It is called JIT, Just-In-Time compilation or dynamic translation.
Slow
As a matter of the fact, JavaScript is slow. It can be explained by its environment, the browser, which is designed not only to run scripts. What about NodeJS? Well, it is not fast too. Sometimes, NodeJS is even slower than Python.
Is JavaScript easy or hard?
No, JavaScript is neither easy nor hard. Just know that a lot of the things you pick up quickly will not be obvious at first, and you will learn in more ways than one.
JavaScript is easier than other programming languages that you may have tried learning at one point or another. However, this doesn’t mean it’s easy for beginners to pick up and get start coding quickly. If you go with a JavaScript and don’t pay attention on how you should be using it, you will probably end up with lots of work to do to make the code work right.
There is a lot of frameworks and libraries to make JS coding easier. But with modern JS, you don’t need a lot of them anymore. For instance, the popularity of jQuery is descending.
Conclusion
Overall, JavaScript is easy programming language to learn. So the answer is yes.
The complexity of the language increases from simple examples to real world applications but most users have no trouble understanding the basics of the language. What does help to learn JavaScript is the practice. The more time you spend coding the more comfortable you will feel working with JavaScript.