Client-side JavaScript brings developers closer to the glass.
In a flexibly scripted programming language like JavaScript, everything is an object. Developers can code and push new features faster, enabling end users rather than making them wait months for an update under a more traditional sever-side development model.
Modern Web and mobile consumer application development is all about responding to what users want: faster load times, more intuitive UIs, an app fix before they even have a chance to report an error. Applications serving thousands of enterprise customers are no different, and in a programming tool landscape driven more and more by open-source and robust third-party ecosystems, JavaScript gives developers the most options.
As reported in this month’s feature, the future of JavaScript is almost upon us. ECMAScript 6, the next standardized edition of the language’s foundation, will grant developers new capabilities through the use of classes, modules, typed arrays and other features affording finer control over each component of a JavaScript application. These capabilities are very familiar to enterprise developers, who no longer will be able to scoff at what they’ve seen as a lightweight client-side scripting language.
As Sympraxis Consulting cofounder and president Marc Anderson explained in the feature, JavaScript gives you an immediacy of working with the client that you just can’t get with a compiled language. The cycle time of coding a change to a client’s application, then compiling and deploying it to a server, simply doesn’t compare to reloading a Web page right where the user is, he explained.
The multi-paradigm language supports functional, imperative, object-oriented and, with ES6, even meta-programming styles. The proliferation of code engines, runtimes and supersets opens Java, C, Python, Ruby and dozens more languages to JavaScript compilation.
The evolution of JavaScript’s ecosystem—regardless of preferred language or programming style—leaves enterprise developers with no excuse not to familiarize themselves with the language permeating every development platform, from browsers and mobile apps, to server-side and embedded applications.
Andrew Connell, a software development contractor with experience in both server-side enterprise development and client-side Web development, said JavaScript awareness is growing among the server-side community. Developers are beginning to understand JavaScript is just another tool in their toolboxes, he said, and not an inferior one as seen by decade-old enterprise perceptions.
Even Microsoft and Google are crossing traditional boundaries to collaborate on writing Angular 2—the next iteration of the popular open-source JavaScript framework—in Microsoft’s TypeScript language. If two of the biggest tech corporations can recognize the significance of investing in JavaScript for their collective future, it’s time for back-end and server-side developers to do the same.
Whether developers like it or not, JavaScript is no longer just an option in keeping up with the pace of software development. It’s a requirement.
