Is Future looking promising for JavaScript?

TC39 committee that oversees ECMA script is updating JavaScript at moment that means we can expect ES2019 around Q2/Q3 2019 with new feature and specially the introduction of Web Assembly, which can become game changer and increase the capability to unimaginable height.

Web Assembly is just binary format that are low-level language that can deliver high-performance application to the web, this can bring good amount of influence on the future of the JavaScript language.

To understand how massive the JavaScript involved we need to look at the historical success of the JavaScript, according to me major success came from three different mile stones.

1. Ajax : 
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3. This set the stage for single page application for the future, around 1997, Microsoft was contributing big amount of effort to ECMAScript but mostly play their own rules. And Yes, Ajax is introduced by the Microsoft. Prior to Winter 1999 web application were based on complete HTML pages. Each user action required that a completely new page be loaded from the server. This process was so inefficient, all page content disappeared, then the new page appeared. Each time the browser reloaded a page because of a partial change, all the content had to be re-sent, even though only some of the information had changed. This placed an additional load on the server and made bandwidth a limiting factor on performance. Ajax became as Hero to this solution.

2. jQuery : Yes, I know you will ask Why jQuery can become a JavaScript’s success milestone? Let me make you realize, around mid-2006 developers were facing big challenges related to cross-browser compatibility. jQuery came as a solution for this problem. It was a nightmare for the web developer at that time.

Signature feature of jQuery — selector engine (named as “Sizzle”), that introduced new way of DOM element selection and traversal.

The best part it enables developer to create their own plugins on top this library where developer create abstraction for different kind of solution, brings modularity which allow creation of theme-able widget.

Today jQuery is used everywhere you will hardly find any web page without it. More than 80 % of the web application uses jQuery library around the globe.

3. V8 :With the release of Google Chrome and v8 engine both were release at the same time, completely changes the way JavaScript was compiled and interpreted making it a viable option for running high performance application in the browser and server side.

JavaScript started with primary purpose of creating dynamic and interactive experience to the web application but today it broke the boundary, came out of the browser environment and become server scripting language where you can write real-time web application and scale well. This in turn made possible for developers to build their entire application stack with a single programming language.

In 2007, Jeff Atwood (co-founder of StackOverflow) made a quote:

“Any application that can be written in JavaScript, will eventually be written in JavaScript.”

Not only that, this is an era of AR and VR, which demands high performance processing capability to render 3D world to human eye or may be image processing.Here what ECMA 2019 going to bring Web Assembly as standard to the browser which can enable these capabilities right in your browser.

Let’s sit tight wait for ECMA Script 2019 to do their magic!