JavaScript and Applications

JavaScript is one of the functional programming languages which are also called as ECMA script. It is prototype-based, substance oriented and scripting language which are vibrant, fragile in coding and has key functions. JavaScript is applying of the ECMA script to make it standard and specifically used in the type of client-side JavaScript, executed as part of a web browser in order to contribute improved user interfaces and substance websites. This paves accessibility within the computational objects of the host environment.

Relevance and Applicability

The importance of JavaScript especially in the applications beyond the web pages such as in PDF documents, site specific browsers and desktop widgets are really notable. The new versions of this language and frameworks have enhanced the fame of JavaScript for server side web applications. The syntax of this language is somewhat similar to that of C perhaps even influential. It copies names and naming principles from java and except for these components these are different and possess distinguished semantics. The main components for the designing of the language is derived from the self and scheme programming languages.

Origin and Development

The inventor of the language is Brendon Eich from Netscape who called it first as mocha. It was later renamed as live script. Finally, it was known as JavaScript. Though there were confusions with the java programming language in the beginning, the impression was later on removed with the salient features of the JavaScript. It attained fame mainly because of the success in client-side scripting language for web pages.

Possibilities and Limitations

Similar to most of the languages JavaScript applications are types which are associated with values and not with variables. And JavaScript is a complete object based programming language which has arrays as associative and that are augmented with prototypes. The string keys are like: obj.x  = 10 and obj [“x”] = 10 are said to be equivalent while the dot notation is syntactic sugar. Then there are functional elements like first class functions which are objects themselves, nested functions and closures.

There are certain programs which JavaScript will not be able to do like this cannot read files from or write them to the file system on the computer. It is one of the obvious security dangers and this cannot execute other programs which is a major limitation. Finally this cannot have connections to computer though downloading a HTML page or sending mail is possible. But undertaking such tasks will also create problems.

Questions:

• What is JavaScript?
• State some of JavaScript’s limitations.