Why You Should Learn JavaScript First?

Understanding the beginner-friendly nature of JavaScript along with learning resources.

Photo by Pankaj Patel on Unsplash

It can be overwhelming to see a long list of programming languages when starting out your coding journey. Software development is always evolving and what is trending now may become obsolete five years from now. Hence, choosing your first language can become harder.

Learning any programming is quite a challenge in itself. You have to spend hundreds of hours practicing to become competent with any language. Moreover, the first programming language you learn has to be very intuitive and user-friendly, along with good community support.

Personally, I have experience with Java, Python, C, C#, Dart, and JavaScript. But out of all these, I found JavaScript to be the most beginner-friendly with a not-so-steep learning curve.

Here are the reasons why JavaScript(JS) is the first language you should learn:

1. Easy to debug

Debugging or in words, finding faults or bugs in your code, is one of the things you would often find yourself doing especially when you are just starting out.

JavaScript(JS) offers graphical ways to debug code. Since JavaScript is used in all the modern web browsers, it is easier to debug since you can see all the changes instead of relying solely on logging messages in the terminal.

Chrome DevTools set of web developer tools built directly into the Google Chrome browser which allows for faster debugging. Moreover, JS is the most commonly used language, hence you will have a bigger chance of finding solutions online if you get stuck somewhere.

2. Wide Application

It is one of the most versatile languages out there. You can essentially build an application for every platform and device type out there using JS. Learning a single language to develop apps for a variety of platforms is one of the strong points of JS.

Additionally, JS provides you with a large array of frameworks that can make development a lot easier. For instance, you can use Vue.js to develop websites, use React Native for mobile apps, Electron.js for desktops, and Node.js for servers. At the heart of all these frameworks is JavaScript.

3. Simple Syntax

JS has a very straightforward syntax, especially when compared to languages like Java and C.

I have printed a simple ‘Hello world’ message using Java and JavaScript and you can clearly recognize the simplicity of JavaScript.

Java:-

class HelloWorld {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        System.out.println("Hello, World!"); 
    }
}

JavaScript:-

console.log('Hello World');

Furthermore, it is easy to declare variables in JS. In JS, you don’t need to declare a data type for your variable. For example, you can write var age= 15; and JS will automatically interpret it as a number. In other languages such as C, you have to specify if the variable is an integer, float, etc.

4. Career Opportunities

JavaScript will definitely give a boost to your software development career. As stated earlier, with JS you can build applications for different platforms. This makes you eligible for a lot of jobs.

At the time of writing this, there are about 19,000 jobs on Indeed, over 80,000 jobs in the US on LinkedIn, and almost 30,000 on Monster.com. The demand for jobs requiring is JavaScript is surely there.

In fact, the US Bureau of Labor & Statistics predicts that developer jobs will grow 15% between now and 2024. This actually stems from the wide reach of JavaScript. It is used almost everywhere and it is prebuilt on web browsers, which encourages most companies to use JavaScript in every single on of their application.

Where to start learning JavaScript?

Since JavaScript is so commonly used, you can find a large number of tutorials and ebooks online for free that cover it in-depth. However, I would like to share some of the resources which I have found quite helpful.

1. Mozilla’s Extensive Documentation

2. Complete Intro to JavaScript by Max Ogden

3. Wikibook JavaScript book

4. Eloquent JavaScript (ebook)

5. The Modern JavaScript Tutorial

Besides this, you can find complete guides on sites such as Udemy as well. I also suggest following Brad Traversy and Academind on YouTube. If you want a more practical approach, you can look into this website which will teach you to build 30 projects using JavaScript in 30 days.

Note: None of the links are affiliated

Conclusion

The Internet has exposed us to an incredible amount of free knowledge and therefore, we might feel lost at times deciding what to learn and which options will work the best for us. Hence, it is important to know what you are learning and why.

If you are starting your coding journey, I highly recommend JavaScript. It is the language of the internet. Moreover, it has easier to understand syntax along with a vibrant community. Not only this but it also opens doors for your professional life as there is a high demand for JavaScript developers in the market.