JavaScript

High-level programming language / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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JavaScript (/ˈɑːvəskrɪpt/), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language that is one of the core technologies of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. As of 2023, 98.7% of websites use JavaScript on the client side for webpage behavior,[10] often incorporating third-party libraries. All major web browsers have a dedicated JavaScript engine to execute the code on users' devices.

Quick facts: Paradigm, Designed by, First appear...
JavaScript
JavaScript_code.png
Screenshot of JavaScript source code
ParadigmMulti-paradigm: event-driven, functional, imperative, procedural, object-oriented programming
Designed byBrendan Eich of Netscape initially; others have also contributed to the ECMAScript standard
First appearedDecember 4, 1995; 27 years ago (1995-12-04)[1]
Stable release
ECMAScript 2021[2] Edit this on Wikidata / June 2021; 2 years ago (June 2021)
Preview release
ECMAScript 2022[3] Edit this on Wikidata / 22 July 2021; 2 years ago (22 July 2021)
Typing disciplineDynamic, weak, duck
Filename extensions
  • .js
  • .cjs
  • .mjs[4]
Websiteecma-international.org/publications-and-standards/standards/ecma-262/
Major implementations
V8, JavaScriptCore, SpiderMonkey, Chakra
Influenced by
Java,[5][6] Scheme,[6] Self,[7] AWK,[8] HyperTalk[9]
Influenced
ActionScript, AssemblyScript, CoffeeScript, Dart, Haxe, JS++, Opa, TypeScript
Close

JavaScript is a high-level, often just-in-time compiled language that conforms to the ECMAScript standard.[11] It has dynamic typing, prototype-based object-orientation, and first-class functions. It is multi-paradigm, supporting 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 are now core components of some servers and a variety of applications. The most popular runtime system for this usage is Node.js.

Although Java and JavaScript are similar in name, syntax, and respective standard libraries, the two languages are distinct and differ greatly in design.