JavaScript: Reasons it is popular and how some major companies use JavaScript

JavaScript is a text-based programming language used both on the client-side and server-side that allows to make web pages interactive. HTML and CSS are languages that give structure and style to web pages, JavaScript gives web pages interactive elements that engage a user. Also, it is the only programming language native to the web browser.

Incorporating JavaScript improves the user experience of the web page by converting it from a static to an interactive one. JavaScript is mainly used for web-based applications and web browsers. But, JavaScript is also used beyond the web in software, servers and embedded hardware controls.

JavaScript is one of the most powerful languages on the planet because of its performance and omnipresence.

Some of the reasons JavaScript has become popular and stronger than ever:

1. V8, the engine powering JavaScript:- A JavaScript engine is an interpreter which executes JavaScript code. V* is Google’s open-source high performance JavaScript and WebAssembly JIT engine written in C++.

It is used in Chrome and in NodeJS. The V8 engine can run standalone or can be embedded into any C++ application. This piece of software which highly optimizes which highly optimizes the JS code and converts it into machine code for the CPU to execute

2. Omnipresence & Omni-platform: JavaScript can run everywhere including devices like mobiles, tablets, laptops, and, on the client side as well as the server side. This ability to run everywhere makes JavaScript a universal language.

JavaScript is present on Front-end (Browsers), Back-end (Node) and Android/iOS (React Native, NativeScript, etc.).

3. Mature ecosystem and community: JavaScript has one of the most mature ecosystems a programming language could ever have. The JavaScript community is vast and the entry barrier is extremely low. If a person enters as a beginner, there is a very little chance that problem hasn’t been encountered before. Almost all the possible errors and mistakes for JavaScript have already been asked about on various forums and sites like Stack Overflow.

4. JavaScript is Fast and Scalable: JavaScript is fast in the sense that V8 can generate highly optimized code by monitoring how the code executes, delaying bits of execution which are not used and optimizing the code segments which are used over and over when compared to its competitors. With advancements in V8 becoming more efficient JavaScript (Node) is highly scalable.

5. MEAN and MERN Stack: The developers can further simplify development of modern web applications taking advantage of four components of MEAN or MERN stack- MongoDB, Express.JS, Angular.JS or ReactJS, and Node.JS. AngularJS is a popular JavaScript framework supported by Google for developing dynamic web application and ReactJS is similar to Angular and brings many advantages that makes it a better choice than other frameworks, NodeJS is a cross-platform and server-side runtime environment, ExpressJS is designed with features for simplifying the development of single page and multiple pages websites, and MongoDB is a modern schema less NoSQL database. These four components of MEAN or MERN stack enable developers to write both front-end and back-end of a website in JavaScript. However, components of MEAN or MERN stack are still interoperable.

6. Bleeding edge features and advancement: JavaScript standards are led by the ECMA-262 TC39 community. ECMAScript releases a new standard of JavaScript every single year, and a developer can even request that new features be added to the language.

How some major companies are making use of JavaScript:

Walmart:

Walmart is one of the largest retailers in the world, and their online retail business is gigantic. Therefore, they also need a technologically advanced web application for driving their online business.

Walmart turned to NodeJS when they needed something faster and light weight for their mobile site. Walmart started using Node as a Java replacement. Today, Walmart’s site that we see is powered by Node. NodeJS was also the ideal choice for other web applications within their marketplace that require multiple users to be able to access management interfaces simultaneously.

Uber:

The primary requirement of Uber is handling large amount of data in real time. They have to handle millions of requests coming in continuously, and that’s not just hits on a page. Uber needs to track driver locations, rider locations, and incoming requests. There is a need to seamlessly sort data and matching riders as fast as possible.

All of this plays to NodeJS’s and JavaScript’s strengths. Node is designed for handling requests and hands off data quickly. The asynchronous capabilities are a huge part of that. Node is central to Uber’s user facing stack.

eBay:

For a long time, eBay’s tech stack was based on Java. A few years ago, eBay encountered a problem that Java wasn’t the right solution, so they decided a to give NodeJS a shot.

Node worked so well that eBay not only kept using it for that particular service, they began migrating their entire user facing stack to NodeJS. Now, just about everything that you interact with on eBay is powered by Node. Beneath Node, Java is still used for dealing with the databases, but eBay still places a lot of trust in NodeJS.

LinkedIn:

LinkedIn relies on NodeJS for its mobile site. When LinkedIn used Rails for its mobile site it was slow, monolithic and it scaled poorly.

LinkedIn switched over to NodeJS for solving its scaling problems. The asynchronous capabilities of Node allowed the LinkedIn’s mobile site to perform more quickly than before while using fewer resources. Node also made data sharing and building APIs easier for the LinkedIn developers.

Netflix:

Netflix started out using Java for just about everything, and ran into problems with Java’s size and the time it required to develop. Over the time, Netflix moved away from its more traditional structure into the cloud and started to introduce NodeJS.

With Node, Netflix was able to break down pieces of their user interface into individual services. This distributed approach was able to speed things up and reduce the stress on their servers, and today a large portion of Netflix’s interface is running on Node.

Conclusion, JavaScript is everywhere.

These are only a few examples of the companies using JavaScript, but there are many more. So much of the web today runs on JavaScript, it would be much harder to find a company that doesn't use JavaScript in some way.

These companies are among the largest tech companies in the world. Many are also running the largest production deployments of NodeJS.

I hope that this article is helpful. Please feel free to reach out for any feedback, improvements or any doubts.

Thank You.