What makes JavaScript so popular?

One of the main reasons for JavaScript’s popularity was that it came along with and rode the proliferating waves of the internet. Initially it was introduced with Netscape which in the 90s was a large competitor of Windows over the web. The original name was Livescript but Netscape changed it to JavaScript around the same time they added support for Java technology in its Netscape Navigator. Java, a programming language unrelated to JavaScript, was a competitor of C++, which was the popular programming language at that time. This name change was a clever marketing tactic to make JavaScript seem as the spin-off of Java, making it the hot new web programming language. JavaScript became a popular client-side web developing tool and was quickly adopted by Microsoft to be introduced into their Internet Explorer web browser. It continued to grow and was finally accepted as an industry standard for web development/programming.

Aside from the ploys that had intelligently spread JavaScript to every web browser in the world, the following key technical features are what truly make JavaScript a developers’ favorite.

• Easy to learn
• Has expansive libraries to build anything (jQuery, Prototype, Dojo)
• Allows for object oriented design
• Easy to edit and debug
• Speed (In both client and server side)
• Huge interactive community
• AJAX, Node.js