I’ve come across a few individuals who still think that Javascript – or ECMAScript — isn’t a real programming language. For example, on Facebook, there is a group called I forgot the semi-colon, which is a programming group, and in the group info it says the group isn’t for anyone who thinks Javascript is a programming language. The problem is that a lot of these so-called “programmers” think of the web as just another view for which applications written in something like Java would “dump” their data into. The is a completely wrong way of thinking about the Web, and people who think this way will never become successful developing for the Web.
Javascript is used in many places outside of the browser. It is used to develop many feature-rich applications on the Web, and a large part of the Firefox GUI is written in Javascript. Not to mention all those Dashboard Widgets you Mac users like, yep, all in Javascript.
The thing I love about Javascript is that it is flexible. Unlike languages such as Java or C++, Javascript variables are dynamically typed (like Python). This means I can define a variable and initialize it to a string, then later on assign an integer or an object to the same variable without getting some kind of incompatible type errors. You can use structural programming, functional programming, or object-oriented programming in Javascript. This allows you to choose what best fits the current application you’re developing without being restricted to one particular programming paradigm.
So for anyone who thinks Javascript isn’t a real programming language, please tell me why.
