Evolution of JavaScript
The word JavaScript itself brings some interesting topics into the programming community. The question whether JS is used in Client side or in Server side is one of the popular topics that has been discussing since its appearance comes in server side.
Initially JavaScript was used as a scripting language in client side. In 1995, JS was introduced and it ran on Netscape with the intension of creating web pages more dynamic to the users. In these early stages of JS where it was not used in developing web applications, JS had been criticized badly due to it poorly written nature. Although JS had tough periods, the growth on using JS both server and client side developments has lifted it to a top level among the languages used by developers.
The introduction of Node.js gave JS a complete new direction regarding its usage. Node.js let developers to use JS in building backend services which are directly related to server side operations.
Recent studies and surveys on JS describes how JS has been evolved strongly. A Stack Overflow survey in 2017 describes how JS stands at recent past among different areas. These areas can be categorized as popularity on programming languages, usage of programming languages and popularity on frameworks. During the period of 2013 to 2017 popularity had only grown in JS and Python as a percentage. But the popularity on JS had increased to 62% whereas for Python it had only grown up to 32%. The major reason for this outcome could be the compatibility of JS for both front- end and back-end application development. The survey also describes the increase of the use of JS in areas such as web, desktop application development and in data science.
Frameworks and libraries that had been built around JS contributed mainly for this great evolution of JS. Frameworks and libraries such as Angular.js and React.js stay upfront on this evolution.
To sum up, the usage of JS evolves continuously as it works with a vast area of use cases. Also JS has been considered as a language to overcome the interchangeability in IoT(Internet of Things) at present. As advance uses of JS can be seen at present such as NASAs usage on JS on managing the essential data of spacesuits, we can conclude by having a clear idea that the usage of JS will be evolved for many more years in future.