From the course: JavaScript for Web Designers

What is JavaScript? - JavaScript Tutorial

From the course: JavaScript for Web Designers

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What is JavaScript?

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- [Instructor] First the most obvious question in this entire course, what is JavaScript. Let's get one thing out of the way right away. JavaScript is not Java. JavaScript shares some similar syntax with Java and has some other superficial similarities for historical reasons, but they're very different under the hood. The internationally standardized name for the language is ECMAScript, though it's still widely known as JavaScript as well. The point is JavaScript is its own programming language, entirely separate from Java. Let not the names confuse you. So now that we know that JavaScript is not Java, what is it really? It's the programming language of the web, and arguably the most widely-used programming language in the world. And when I say it's the programming language of the web, I mean that it's the language that you use to program the web to make it do what you want. These days JavaScript is most commonly used for what we call front-end development, or client-side development. That is any kind of programming that happens in a web browser as opposed to on a server. If the code is meant to control Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge, or any other browser, JavaScript is the language we're using. For web designers the biggest draw of JavaScript is the creation of interactivity. That means that any time you can click, drag, tap, swipe, anytime you can interact with something on a webpage, generally speaking that's going to involve JavaScript in some way. There are certain kinds of interactivity that don't require JavaScript, but in general if you want a page to react to something the user does, JavaScript is what you want. Right now JavaScript is essentially the most popular and widely available programming language. You'll see JavaScript used in server side or back-end development, especially through Node.js. JavaScript is used to run databases like Mongo DB and can even be used to automate Photoshop. It's available nearly everywhere and can do a lot. For our purposes in this course we're focusing on JavaScript's ability to control websites, but just know that the skills you acquire by learning JavaScript are applicable in many other areas.

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