This year the whole world has been hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic. This unprecedented crisis still affects absolutely all spheres of human activity. Negative consequences of the virus also impact the sphere of web development, but it is one of the global industries that has been moving forward in 2020.
Therefore, it is high time to take a look at the main trends of the passing year in web technologies and JavaScript in particular as well as try to make some predictions about further front-end development in 2021. And of course, we won’t forget to mention how DHTMLX responded to the changing dynamics in the industry during the year and share our plans for the future.
JavaScript Stays on Top
Many web developers accept that JavaScript has some drawbacks and tricky parts, but it is still the most widely-used programming language. According to the Developer Survey 2020 held by Stack Overflow, 69.7% of 47,184 interviewed professional developers gave preference to JavaScript.
Although JavaScript is not perfect, it is hard not to appreciate its rich ecosystem with the abundance of frameworks, libraries, and other useful tools as well as a huge JS community of developers. Moreover, there is a special technical committee (known as TC39) that works on ways to improve JavaScript. Thus, it is next to impossible that JavaScript can be ousted from leading positions in web development any time soon, but TypeScript is likely to become an even more attractive alternative.
TypeScript Continues Conquering New Heights
TypeScript is frequently referred to as an improved version of JavaScript, and for good reasons. TypeScript not only takes advantage of all JavaScript strengths (as it compiles to JS) but also brings along its own powerful features such as static typing, support for modules and interfaces, etc. Besides, TypeScript is easier in terms of learning, maintainability, and debugging. Participants of the Stack Overflow survey named Typescript (67.1%) the most loved programming language right after Rust (86.1%).
The latest report from GitHub also confirms the current dominance of JavaScript in popularity. But at the same time, it clearly shows the rapid growth in demand for TypeScript in recent years.
It can be expected that the same trend will continue in 2021, as Microsoft continues to expand the capabilities of TypeScript and more web apps are written in this programming language.
#trends #javascript #css
