Chapter 1. JavaScript—A Quick Overview
JavaScript is a very powerful language. It is the most popular language in the world and is one of the most prominent languages on the Internet. For example, GitHub (the world's largest code host, available at https://github.com ) hosts over 400,000 JavaScript repositories (the largest number of projects is in JavaScript; refer to http://goo.gl/ZFx6mg ). The number of projects in JavaScript in GitHub grows every year.
JavaScript is not a language that can only be used on the frontend. It can also be used in the backend, and Node.js is the technology responsible for this. The number of Node Package modules (https://www.npmjs.org/) also grows exponentially.
JavaScript is a must-have on your résumé if you are or will become a web developer.
In this chapter, you will learn the syntax and some necessary basic functionalities of Javascript, so we can start developing our own data structure and algorithms. We will cover:
- Setting up the environment
- Javascript basics
- Control structures
- Functions
- Object-oriented programming in Javascript
- Debugging and tools
- Introduction to ECMAScript 6 and ECMAScript 7
