Advantages and Disadvantages of JavaScript

The evolution of programming languages reflects changing needs over time. In the 1990s, C dominated, but as demands shifted, Python emerged. JavaScript now takes center stage, thanks to its execution in clients' browsers for dynamic web development.

Initially developed by Netscape, JavaScript's syntax resembles Java and C. Following ECMAScript standards, it balances advantages and disadvantages, making it a pivotal technology in the current programming landscape.

Advantages of JavaScript

Let us now see some of the advantages of JavaScript that make it so a functional and convenient programming language.

1. Simple Syntax

JavaScript is a very easy-to-use programming language. Apart from this, it has a very simple syntax that can be easily understood by beginners as well as experienced programmers. Hence this makes Javascript a very beginner-friendly programming language.

2. Client-side Execution

JavaScript has "client-side" execution which simply means that the JavaScript code is executed in the client's browser. The client here is the user who is using the browser to access various websites. In simple words, whenever the web page loads in the client's browser, the JS of that web page gets executed there on the browser itself and the user/client doesn't have to deal with any non-browser software. Hence, Client-side code execution makes JavaScript a more convenient programming language.

3. Huge Community Support

As mentioned earlier, JavaScript was created in 1995 and is widely accepted. Hence JavaScript has huge developer community support. In simple words, developer community support helps you to solve the errors that you face while developing an application or while working with JavaScript. Adding to that, you can easily find solutions on StackOverflow for most of the errors/issues you face in JavaScript. JS is placed on top in some rankings based on its awesome developer community support.

4. Validation on Browser

You might have noticed that while filling out online forms, sometimes we get validation errors such as email is not valid, email format is incorrect, etc. These validations are done on the client side only using JavaScript. Imagine if there's no client-side validation, what would have happened if the user entered the wrong data ? It would have been sent to the server and then get validated there. This could have unnecessarily affected the bandwidth and could have wasted a lot of time on invalidations. Hence client-side validations protect bandwidth from getting affected and also save time. This also allows proper utilization of servers. Hence it becomes an amazing advantage for us.

5. Rapid Growth and Development

JavaScript is a constantly evolving programming language which means that it is developed and maintained as per the requirements of the modern world. The standards for JavaScript are the "ECMAScript Language Specification (ECMA-262)" and the "ECMAScript Internationalization API specification (ECMA-402)". Also, ES6 (ECMAScript 2015) is considered the most important update in JavaScript yet due to the amazing and powerful features it brought to the table such as the let keyword, the const keyword, Arrow Functions, For/of, Map Objects, Set Objects, Classes, Promises, etc.

6. Amazing Libraries/Frameworks

If you just search the most popular frameworks/libraries, you will find that most of them are JavaScript based only. Popular frameworks such as Vue.js, and Angular.js, a library such as React.js, and runtime environments such as Node.js, all of these are JS based only with different use cases and are used in the application development based on the requirements. The point here is that with the increasing demand for technology, various kinds of JavaScript frameworks and libraries have proved to be very helpful for the developer community. Adding to that, Nowadays, React.js is one of the most popular JavaScript libraries which is aggressively used in Front-end Website development.

7. On Browser Debugging Support

Debugging in JavaScript becomes very easy due to in-browser debugging support. There is something called "Developer Tools" in every browser that can be used for debugging the code in the browser itself, amazing right ?! You can open the developer tools option either from the settings of the browser or using the shortcut keys that is :

• For Firefox :

• For Chrome :

8. Object! Object!

The most important key point about JavaScript is that almost everything in JavaScript is an "Object", even functions are also objects in JavaScript! This makes JavaScript a very powerful programming language.

I assume you know that objects can have properties and they can be assigned to any variable, hence, functions being objects in JS can also have properties and they can also be assigned to variables. Functions in JavaScript are also called first-class citizens and they are so powerful that they can even be passed as an argument to another function. Anyways, JS is not a class-based object-oriented programming language(which means no classes in JS) but a prototype-based object-oriented programming language.

9. Full-stack Applications

Initially, JavaScript was used for dynamic web pages only but over the years it has improved drastically and has expanded its horizon to various domains such as Backend(Node.js), Frontend(React.js/Angular.js), etc. JavaScript is widely used to create full-stack web applications using various tech stacks such as MERN(MongoDB, Express.js, React.js, Node.js) stack and MEAN(MongoDB, Express.js, Angular.js, Node.js) stack.

What are the Disadvantages of JavaScript?

Now, let us have a brief look over some of the disadvantages of JavaScript.

1. Less Secure

The JS code that is executed on the client side is considered relatively less secure when compared with the JS code that is executed on the server side.

2. Stucked Rendering

When the JS is executed in the browser, there can be chances of errors too in the code, if any error gets detected during the code execution, the code execution stops there only. Due to this, there may be no JS on the website.

3. No Multiple Inheritance

Unlike C++, JS does not support Multiple Inheritance. In other words, JS supports single inheritance but not multiple inheritances.

Why is JavaScript So Important?

Now let us discuss the reasons behind the importance of JavaScript.

1. Very Powerful Functions

JS Functions are one of the most important factors in making JavaScript a very powerful programming language. Functions being so much powerful helps a lot in functional programming in JS. We have already discussed Functions in JS earlier in this article only.

2. Multi-functional Website Development

JavaScript allows you to create multi-functional websites either using Vanilla JS or using various libraries/frameworks like React.js, Angular.js, etc. From Front-end with React/Angular to Back-end with Node, JavaScript has covered it all. Isn't it amazing?!

3. Client-side Scripting

This one has also discussed earlier that JavaScript is a client-side scripting language(executed on the client-side). Apart from this, One does not necessarily have to download any other file to write and execute JavaScript code, this can be done inside the browser also.

Alternatives to JavaScript

Even though JS is a fantastic programming language, some alternatives to it can also do the work. In this article, we will discuss TypeScript. So, let us have a brief look at TypeScript below :

• TypeScript is considered the enhanced version of JS.
• TypeScript is a strongly typed programming language that is developed and maintained by Microsoft.
• TypeScript is known as an Object-oriented programming language while JS is a prototype-based programming language.
• Another key difference between TypeScript and JS is that JS does not support interfaces but TypeScript does.

There are some other alternatives also such as CoffeeScript, Dart, etc. But TypeScript is the most popular one.

Learn about Important Concepts in JavaScript

• If you want to dig deeper into various concepts in JavaScript with detailed explanations then please check out this Link.
• Difference between Typescript and Javascript