Current State

Particularly in the last few years the usage of JavaScript has grown explosively. Instead of using it to sprinkle some functionality to their sites some people are using it to manage the whole stack from backend to frontend. This has been possible thanks to the increasing popularity of Node.js. A whole ecosystem has grown around it. Particularly NPM has been an important factor in this growth as it has allowed people to share their modules and use ones created by others.

Traditionally this has been a weakness of JavaScript as it does not come with a de facto module system. Let's just say the situation is still a bit messy although it is getting better on the frontend side thanks to solutions such as RequireJS and browserify. The former implements a module definition known as AMD whereas the latter allows to use module semantics familiar from Node on the frontend side.

Might Run on Your Toaster

What makes JavaScript interesting is the fact that it is supported by a wide range of hardware already. Just imagine the mobile devices around that can execute it. And that is not counting all the desktop systems. It is as ubiquitous as a language can get. In some ways it can be considered the assembly language of the web generation. It is that important.

There are APIs and APIs

Even though it is widely supported it takes more than just a language to make something useful. That is where browser and server-side APIs come in. Sometimes the APIs aren't particularly easy to use. As the popularity of jQuery shows there is sometimes demand for solutions that make them easier.

More Powerful, More Standard

During the last few years we've progressed a lot on the browser side. JavaScript engines have become more powerful. This trend was initiated by Google's Chrome and has since led to significant improvements in performance. Standards are supported better. Thanks to Microsoft and its initiatives with Internet Explorer 9 and 10 they've started to catch up with the others and in some ways gone past even. That is a good trend for us web developers as gradually we may start to ditch legacy solutions needed by antiquated browsers such as Internet Explorer 6.

Still Hope for Newbies

If you have not hopped into the JavaScript train yet, it is a good time to do so now. It's not too late. In fact a lot of development is going on. Newest developments include the introduction of MVC frameworks on the frontend side and reactive programming. Particularly latter seems to be trending currently. There has also been development on the asynchronous side as solutions have been provided that allow us to deal with callbacks in better ways. These include promise and future based solutions. In a way reactive programming yields a solution for this problem too.

ES6 - The Future

The language itself is headed towards a brighter future with ES6. The specification promises to bring forth improvements such as long awaited modules, several language constructs and overall just standard ways of doing things so we can avoid reinventing the wheel ourselves. In fact you can mimic some of the planned features already but obviously it won't look or feel as good. On example of this is generators. I'll discuss this particular case later (TODO: link).

Conclusion

TODO: conclude + link to next section