Why JavaScript?

I'll be honest, JavaScript is not my favorite language... but I do write a lot of it.

Click to play video

Here's the deal, JavaScript is the only language that runs in the browser. (okay, there's WebAssembly, but that's different). If your app is accessed via a web browser, it's almost certainly gonna need some JavaScript.

JavaScript has some things I don't like:

Not statically typed (although TypeScript helps)
Legacy baggage (like var and old code that doesn't use promises)
Weird quirks (like == vs ===)
Always acts slightly differently in every browser/runtime

But it has some serious things going for it:

Almost every technology company uses it somehow, so there are a lot of jobs
C-style syntax, so it's easy to learn if you know any other C-style language
Many built-in features that are particularly useful on the web
Can be used for both front-end and back-end development, simplifying an org's tech stack
Big companies have invested a lot in making it better and faster over the years
Great support for asynchronous programming