It’s no surprise that coding is a valuable skill for any job-seeker to have. According to a 2016 report from Oracle & Burning Glass, programming and coding jobs are growing 50% faster than the job market overall. Additionally, according to the 2019 StackOverflow survey, JavaScript is the most popular language among developers.
But picking a coding language to start with can be overwhelming for those first learning to code. Should you start with Ruby? Python? Or maybe SQL? With so many coding languages to choose from, it’s important for beginners to pick a language that is fun, interactive and dynamic.
Here are our 6 reasons why JavaScript is the best coding language to learn:
1- JavaScript is the most popular language
JavaScript is the most popular language, and is still increasing in popularity. According to this report from Stack Overflow, JavaScript is the most commonly used programming language, for the sixth year in a row. The popularity of JavaScript rose from 57% in 2013 to 70% in 2017. JavaScript is the most popular language above Java, Python, Ruby, and more.
2- There’s a low threshold to get started
JavaScript is the language that browsers use. It’s easy to get started with and to understand. You can get going right away - unlike other languages, you don’t have install a bunch of programs before you can even begin.
3- JavaScript is a fun, interactive language
You have a full user interface to play with right away – JavaScript has a graphical UI that’s fun and easy to manipulate. You can write code that will run in your browser, so you can build interactive projects earlier on in the learning process.
4- Strong support for learning
Every browser comes with source code viewing features that lets you learn from other people's live code. Plus, JavaScript has the largest and most active repository of library code in the world. People in the JavaScript community are very active and supportive in sharing and making use of each other's code – JavaScript has a large community on StackOverflow and over 3,600 JavaScript Meetup groups worldwide. Beginners, don’t be shy – you can share your code too!
5- Great debugging tools for learning
An interactive JavaScript interpreter is built right into the browser, allowing you to experiment and get instantaneous feedback, which helps you learn faster.
6- It’s a great foundational language for learning more powerful programming styles
JavaScript comes out of the box with support for the event-driven programming style, where the flow of your code is controlled by user events or system events. This style of programming is absolutely necessary for building user interfaces and is also a very helpful paradigm for designing scalable server-side systems.
JavaScript is intuitive for a beginner just learning to code and a great vehicle to teach students the principles of Computer Science. Once you really understand at a deep level how JavaScript works, you become quite capable of picking up other languages.
Whether you’re planning on eventually being a front-end or back-end developer, there’s no doubt that JavaScript is the best coding language to learn for beginners.
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