JavaScript logo

JavaScript

Lightweight, interpreted, object-oriented language with first-class functions
357K
271.3K
+ 1
8.1K

What is JavaScript?

JavaScript is most known as the scripting language for Web pages, but used in many non-browser environments as well such as node.js or Apache CouchDB. It is a prototype-based, multi-paradigm scripting language that is dynamic,and supports object-oriented, imperative, and functional programming styles.
JavaScript is a tool in the Languages category of a tech stack.

Who uses JavaScript?

Companies
15609 companies reportedly use JavaScript in their tech stacks, including Airbnb, Instagram, and LaunchDarkly.

Developers
296230 developers on StackShare have stated that they use JavaScript.

JavaScript Integrations

PHP, AngularJS, Webpack, Font Awesome, and Redux are some of the popular tools that integrate with JavaScript. Here's a list of all 632 tools that integrate with JavaScript.
Pros of JavaScript
1.7K
Can be used on frontend/backend
1.5K
It's everywhere
1.2K
Lots of great frameworks
897
Fast
745
Light weight
425
Flexible
392
You can't get a device today that doesn't run js
286
Non-blocking i/o
237
Ubiquitousness
191
Expressive
55
Extended functionality to web pages
49
Relatively easy language
46
Executed on the client side
30
Relatively fast to the end user
25
Pure Javascript
21
Functional programming
15
Async
13
Full-stack
12
Setup is easy
12
Its everywhere
12
Future Language of The Web
11
Because I love functions
11
JavaScript is the New PHP
10
Like it or not, JS is part of the web standard
9
Expansive community
9
Everyone use it
9
Can be used in backend, frontend and DB
9
Easy
8
Most Popular Language in the World
8
Powerful
8
Can be used both as frontend and backend as well
8
For the good parts
8
No need to use PHP
8
Easy to hire developers
7
Agile, packages simple to use
7
Love-hate relationship
7
Photoshop has 3 JS runtimes built in
7
Evolution of C
7
It's fun
7
Hard not to use
7
Versitile
7
Its fun and fast
7
Nice
7
Popularized Class-Less Architecture & Lambdas
7
Supports lambdas and closures
6
It let's me use Babel & Typescript
6
Can be used on frontend/backend/Mobile/create PRO Ui
6
1.6K Can be used on frontend/backend
6
Client side JS uses the visitors CPU to save Server Res
6
Easy to make something
5
Clojurescript
5
Promise relationship
5
Stockholm Syndrome
5
Function expressions are useful for callbacks
5
Scope manipulation
5
Everywhere
5
Client processing
5
What to add
4
Because it is so simple and lightweight
4
Only Programming language on browser
1
Test
1
Hard to learn
1
Test2
1
Not the best
1
Easy to understand
1
Subskill #4
1
Easy to learn
0
Hard 彤
Decisions about JavaScript

Here are some stack decisions, common use cases and reviews by companies and developers who chose JavaScript in their tech stack.

Denys
Software engineer at Typeform · | 13 upvotes · 1.9M views
Shared insights
at
  • Go because it's easy and simple, facilitates collaboration , and also it's fast, scalable, powerful.
  • Visual Studio Code because it has one of the most sophisticated Go language support plugins.
  • Vim because it's Vim
  • Git because it's Git
  • Docker and Docker Compose because it's quick and easy to have reproducible builds/tests with them
  • Arch Linux because Docker for Mac/Win is a disaster for the human nervous system, and Arch is the coolest Linux distro so far
  • Stack Overflow because of Copy-Paste Driven Development
  • JavaScript and Python when a something needs to be coded for yesterday
  • PhpStorm because it saves me like 300 "Ctrl+F" key strokes a minute
  • cURL because terminal all the way
See more
Shared insights

All of our Frontend code is written in ECMAScript 6 using React/Redux, running on Node.js JavaScript

See more
Priit Kaasik
CTO at Katana Cloud Inventory · | 8 upvotes · 462.6K views
Shared insights
at

We undertook the task of building a manufacturing ERP for small branded manufacturers. We needed to build a lot, fast with a small team, and have clear focus on product delivery. We chose JavaScript / Node.js ( React + LoopBack full stack) , Heroku and Heroku Postgres (also Heroku Redis ) . This decision has guided us to picking other key technologies. It has granted us high pace of product delivery and service availability while operating with a small team.

See more
Lidiexy Alonso
Senior Software Engineer at Palinode LLC · | 6 upvotes · 474.2K views
Shared insights

As developer at Applied Health Analytics we decided to create a React Native App. In terms of #IDE I'm a good fan of PhpStorm cause we have a lot of PHP in the backend, but I've definitely gave a try to Visual Studio Code and now is my primary JavaScript #IDE. I was impress how fast VS Code has become the No.1 @JavaScript Editor in the community.

See more
Priit Kaasik
CTO at Katana Cloud Inventory · | 8 upvotes · 407.9K views
Shared insights
at

Sometimes #ad-blocking addons can cause a real headache when working with JavaScript apps. Onboarding assistants (Appcues + elevio ), chat (Intercom) and product usage insight (Hotjar) have all landed on their blacklists. I guess there is a perfectly good reason for this that I just don't know.

In order to fix this, we had to set up our own content delivery service. We chose Amazon CloudFront and Amazon S3 to do the job because it has a good synergy with Heroku PaaS we are already using.

See more
Needs advice
on
TypeScriptTypeScript
and
Flow (JS)Flow (JS)

From a StackShare community member: "We are looking to rewrite our outdated front-end with TypeScript. Right now we have a mix of CoffeeScript and vanilla JavaScript. I have read that adopting TypeScript can help enforce better code quality, and best practices. I also heard good things about Flow (JS). Which one would you recommend and why?"

See more

Blog Posts

May 6 2020 at 6:34AM

Pinterest

JavaScriptC++Varnish+6
5
3425
JavaScriptGitHubReact+12
5
4168
Oct 24 2019 at 7:43PM

AppSignal

JavaScriptNode.jsJava+8
5
974
Oct 11 2019 at 2:36PM

LogRocket

JavaScriptReactAngularJS+8
5
1991
Oct 3 2019 at 7:13PM

Ably Realtime

JavaScriptPythonNode.js+8
5
3859
JavaScriptPythonPubNub+4
7
1546

JavaScript Alternatives & Comparisons

What are some alternatives to JavaScript?
TypeScript
TypeScript is a language for application-scale JavaScript development. It's a typed superset of JavaScript that compiles to plain JavaScript.
Node.js
Node.js uses an event-driven, non-blocking I/O model that makes it lightweight and efficient, perfect for data-intensive real-time applications that run across distributed devices.
Dart
Dart is a cohesive, scalable platform for building apps that run on the web (where you can use Polymer) or on servers (such as with Google Cloud Platform). Use the Dart language, libraries, and tools to write anything from simple scripts to full-featured apps.
CoffeeScript
It adds syntactic sugar inspired by Ruby, Python and Haskell in an effort to enhance JavaScript's brevity and readability. Specific additional features include list comprehension and de-structuring assignment.
Java
Java is a programming language and computing platform first released by Sun Microsystems in 1995. There are lots of applications and websites that will not work unless you have Java installed, and more are created every day. Java is fast, secure, and reliable. From laptops to datacenters, game consoles to scientific supercomputers, cell phones to the Internet, Java is everywhere!
See all alternatives

JavaScript's Followers
271362 developers follow JavaScript to keep up with related blogs and decisions.