Introduction to JavaScript
JavaScript is the programming language of the web. The overwhelming majority of websites use JavaScript, and all modern web browsers—on desktops, tablets, and phones—include JavaScript interpreters, making JavaScript the most-deployed programming language in history. Over the last decade, Node.js has enabled JavaScript programming outside of web browsers, and the dramatic success of Node means that JavaScript is now also the most-used programming language among software developers. Whether you’re starting from scratch or are already using JavaScript professionally, this book will help you master the language.
If you are already familiar with other programming languages, it may help you to know that JavaScript is a high-level, dynamic, interpreted programming language that is well-suited to object-oriented and functional programming styles. JavaScript’s variables are untyped. Its syntax is loosely based on Java, but the languages are otherwise unrelated. JavaScript derives its first-class functions from Scheme and its prototype based inheritance from the little-known language Self. But you do not need to know any of those languages, or be familiar with those terms, to use this book and learn JavaScript.
The name “JavaScript” is quite misleading. Except for a superficial syntactic resemblance, JavaScript is completely different from the Java programming language. And JavaScript has long since outgrown its scripting-language roots to become a robust and efficient general-purpose language suitable for serious software engineering and projects with huge code bases.
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