JavaScript

a survey

Daniel Lauzon

2016-03-17

Outline

• History
• Language evolution
• Platforms
• Package ecosystems
• Module Loaders
• Build Systems
• Tooling
• Transpilers/Parsers

Please interrupt, ...and ask questions.

History

• Written at Mosaic by Brendan Eich under the name Mocha and later LiveScript, EMCAScript, and JScript (1995)

• Influenced heavily by java, self and scheme
   
• EMCA standard 262
• ES3: 1999
• ES5: 2009

Language evolution

• Browser wars
• Web 2.0
• Mobility
• Realtime - Offline

Asynchronicity

• Callbacks
• Promises
• Reactive (Observable)

Composition

• Prototypal Inheritance 
  • ​(objects without classes, and prototype delegation, aka OLOO — Objects Linking to Other Objects), and
• Functional Programming 
  • ​(enabled by lambdas with closure)

Platforms

• Browsers
• Server / Node.js
• Mobile
• Embeded / IoT

Package ecosystems

Influence of ecosystem

• Small reusable components
• The age of github
• Semantic versioning
• Dependency management

Application Domains

Front-end Frameworks

• jQuery
• Socket.io
• Angular.js
• React.js

Back-end Frameworks

• express
• hapi
• koa
• Loopback
• Firebase / Meteor/Hoodie

Module Loaders

• CommonJS
• UMD
• System.js
• AMD
• ES2015 import

Tooling

• Editors
• DevTools
• Static analysis
• Linters / Formatters
• Minifiers
• Transpilers

Build Systems

• Grunt
• Gulp
• Brocoli
• Webpack

• Workflow
• Test
• Watch
• Reload
• Deploy

Parsers - Transpilers

• Esprima
• Acorn
• Google Closure
• Google Traceur
• ESTree
• Babel
  • Extensions
• ESLint/ESFormat

Compile to JS Languages

• Babel - ES20xx
• Coffeescript
• Typescript
• Closurescript
• ... and so on