Deploy Friday: E25 Language Spotlight: Javascript

Topic: Language Spotlight — JavaScript

Hosts:
Larry Garfield, Platform.sh: https://twitter.com/Crell
Thomas Lattimore, Platform.sh: https://twitter.com/tlattimore

Guests:
Jessica Keener, Senor Software Engineer: https://twitter.com/mistersender
Austin Keener, Software Engineer: https://github.com/DV8FromTheWorld

In our new mini-series, Language Spotlight, we’ll take a tour of every language that Platform.sh supports. Today our focus is on JavaScript, as we delve into what’s new and exciting in the space, asynchronous coding, and the advantages of Node.js with two JavaScript experts and Software Engineers, Jessica and Austin Keener.

Understanding asynchronous JavaScript:

JavaScript can be different from other asynchronous languages. As Austin Keener explains, “In JavaScript, you say, ‘Hey, make this request.’ Whenever you're creating these contexts that need to be actually executed, they're all going into this queue that gets picked up and gets run back on that thread. So while it is single threaded, you still get all of the asynchronous aspects of it, because each piece is broken up, instead of being this one long, continuous thread of execution that needs to happen. And that can cause some question marks to pop up for people, because it's different than the majority of other language asynchronous models.”

Exciting JavaScript developments:

Our other expert guest, Jessica, names the three things that excite her most about the JavaScript space right now. She includes:

- Adding query selectors and query select all
- Improved looping and selecting inside of arrays
- Native support for Ajax

She adds, “As JavaScript is moving further and further into platform jQuery, pushing yourself to learn more than just jQuery and starting to understand some of the underlying native stuff that is supported now is going to be a great advantage.”

Node.js promotes consistency:

Austin Keener shares what he thinks is the biggest advantage of using server-side language Node.js. “Developers are going to be able to understand, read, debug, and contribute to every single one of our repositories no matter where it is in the stack.” He adds that the large amount of available libraries helps, too, “It allows you to have consistency in your language or in your repositories, among your developers, and a shared understanding that you can speak to.”

If you learned something new about JavaScript today, and you’re excited to get started, try Node.js on Platform.sh.

Please share your feedback with us: https://platform-sh.typeform.com/to/g1f5Hz4h#source=E25

Resources:
Node.js on Platform.sh: https://docs.platform.sh/languages/nodejs.html
Mozilla Developer Network JS First Steps: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Learn/JavaScript/First_steps
Deno, a modern overhaul of Node: https://deno.land/
Yargs: http://yargs.js.org/
Commander: https://www.npmjs.com/package/commander
https://cheerio.js.org/
Vue JS: https://vuejs.org/
React JS: https://reactjs.org/
Svelte: https://svelte.dev/
Mithril JS: https://mithril.js.org/
Express JS: http://expressjs.com/
Chalk: https://github.com/chalk/chalk

Platform.sh on social media
Twitter @platformsh
Twitter (France): @platformsh_fr
LinkedIn: Platform.sh
LinkedIn (France): Platform.sh
Facebook: Platform.sh

About Platform.sh
Platform.sh combines a robust, highly reliable hosting platform and modern tools that enable development teams to build, evolve, and scale applications faster and more efficiently—contributing to achieving departmental and organizational goals.

Whether your organization has one website or 1,000, Platform.sh lets your dev team focus on creating innovative, sticky features and apps with their favorite tools, languages, and frameworks—instead of managing infrastructure and process.