Chapter 1. JavaScript is everywhere
This chapter covers
- The core language features of JavaScript
- The core items of a JavaScript engine
- Three best practices in JavaScript development
Let’s talk about Bob. After spending a few years learning how to create desktop applications in C++, he graduated as a software developer in the early 2000s and then went out into the wide world. At that point, the web had just hit its stride, and everybody wanted to be the next Amazon. So the first thing he did was learn web development.
He learned some PHP so that he could dynamically generate web pages, which he usually sprinkled with JavaScript in order to achieve complex functionality such as form validation and even dynamic on-page clocks! Fast-forward a couple of years, and smartphones had become a thing, so anticipating a large new market opening up, Bob went ahead and learned Objective-C and Java to develop mobile apps that run on iOS and Android.
Over the years, Bob has created many successful applications that all have to be maintained and extended. Unfortunately, jumping daily between all these different programming languages and application frameworks has really started to wear down poor Bob.