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JavaScript

Last update: 15 Mar 2025
First version: 15 Mar 2025

One of the "Big Three" web technologies, along with HTML and CSS. Created at Netscape by Brendan Eich for their browser Navigator in 1995. A true programming language providing dynamic functionality to otherwise static and dormant web pages. DOM manipulation is not baked into the JS language. Instead, it's provided through an API, keeping the DOM language-independent and allowing JS the flexibility to expand outside the web with runtimes like Node.js.

JavaScript is...

Just-in-time (JIT) compiled: JavaScript engines like V8 (the Chrome engine) allow source code compilation at runtime rather than before execution, as well as identifying commonly-used portions of code to avoid costly compilation and recompilation.

Dynamically typed: Type safety of JavaScript programs is verified at runtime rather than compile time like Java and C/C++.

Object-oriented: JavaScript uses prototypes for object-orientation rather than classes.

Functional: Functions in JavaScript are first-class citizens, meaning they can be assigned to variables, returned from functions, and passed as arguments to other functions.

References

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