JavaScript is a scripting language developed to enable Web developers to design interactive sites. Although it shares many of the features and structures of the full Java language, it was developed independently. Javascript can interact with HTML source code, enabling Web authors to spice up their sites with dynamic content. (Source: WebOpedia)
| Paradigm | event-driven, functional, imperative |
|---|---|
| Designed by | Brendan Eich of Netscape initially; others have also contributed to the ECMAScript standard |
| First appeared | December 4, 1995 |
| Stable release | ECMAScript 2021 (12th edition) 
/ June 2021 |
| Preview release | ECMAScript 2022
/ 22 July 2021 |
| Typing discipline | Dynamic, weak, duck |
| Filename extensions |
|
| Website | www |
| Major implementations | |
| V8, JavaScriptCore, SpiderMonkey, Chakra | |
| Influenced by | |
| Java,Scheme,AWK,HyperTalk | |
| Influenced | |
| TypeScript, CoffeeScript, AssemblyScript, ActionScript, Dart, Objective-J, Opa, Haxe | |
| |
JavaScript (/ˈdʒɑːvəˌskrɪpt/), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language that conforms to the ECMAScript specification. JavaScript is high-level, often just-in-time compiled, and multi-paradigm. It has curly-bracket syntax, dynamic typing, prototype-based object-orientation, and first-class functions.
Alongside HTML and CSS, JavaScript is one of the core technologies of the World Wide Web. Over 97% of websites use it client-side for web page behavior, often incorporating third-party libraries. All major web browsers have a dedicated JavaScript engine to execute the code on the user's device.
As a multi-paradigm language, JavaScript supports event-driven, functional, and imperative programming styles. It has application programming interfaces (APIs) for working with text, dates, regular expressions, standard data structures, and the Document Object Model (DOM).
The ECMAScript standard does not include any input/output (I/O), such as networking, storage, or graphics facilities. In practice, the web browser or other runtime system provides JavaScript APIs for I/O.
JavaScript engines were originally used only in web browsers, but they are now core components of other software systems, most notably servers and a variety of applications.
Although there are similarities between JavaScript and Java, including language name, syntax, and respective standard libraries, the two languages are distinct and differ greatly in design.
