Why You Should Learn JavaScript

Since the beginning of the web, there have been focus on different techniques for building websites. In the beginning, a lot of the focus was on the browsers and what you could achieve with the different versions of HTML supported in those browsers. As the browsers got better and better they also supported  JavaScript  for adding interaction to the web pages through a scripting interface. We saw a lot of web pages with a lot of  JavaScript  in the end of 90's and the beginning of the millennium, but there were no standards, and of course it was a mess to maintain websites that had a lot of  JavaScript  in them.

The IT bubble burst and  JavaScript  was thrown out, and focus was more on implementing everything server side. People working with front-end related activities focused their efforts on CSS, as browsers started to live up to standards where it was possible to separate content and look-and-feel with XHTML and CSS. For almost 3 years focus was on separating content from design, and front-end from back-end, but soon, around 2005, people felt that the interactivity on the web had declined and with browser supporting standards, maybe we could start looking at  JavaScript  again with different goggles. We saw the birth of AJAX and  JavaScript  libraries such as Prototype, jQuery, MooTools, Dojo and likes. From now on a lot of the people focusing on front-end development started looking into the possibilities that opened up utilizing  JavaScript  in their websites and online web software.

Today we see that a lot of web services open up external api:s letting developers request data from other websites, integrating them into their websites, creating so called mash ups. Google, Yahoo and other large companies open up their  JavaScript  libraries and api:s enabling developers to create even more complex web solutions. In the next couple of years  JavaScript  will also grow stronger on the server side with solutions such as Aptana Jaxer, Rhino and SpiderMonkey. Developers working with web sites and solutions that are built as web solutions better start learning  JavaScript .

Source by Mattias Hising