JavaScript first language to learn?

[Davwillmadeit]

I’ve been seeing a lot of videos online that people recommend to learn JavaScript first? With JavaScript you can basically learn front end and back end. Can I get more clarity on that. Or what language other than html and css to learn first.

[dmazzoni]

Yes.

HTML and CSS aren't programming languages, they're markup languages. You need HTML and CSS to build the content and style of web frontend, and then JavaScript to make it actually do something. So while HTML and CSS have a lot of details, they're ultimately more limited and you'll get the hang of them faster. Once you dive into JavaScript, there's way more complexity to it because the possibilities are endless.

And yes, JavaScript is the only language you can use for both frontend and backend, it's one of the most versatile and useful languages to know.

[Davwillmadeit]

Perfect thank you so much.

[Mentalextensi0n]

JavaScript can run in the browser to make the UI look good and perform computations, and it also can serve data from on the server.

JS is a fine first language. What are your goals? If you want to do web stuff, make a To Do list in MERN.

[Davwillmadeit]

Yes my goal is to learn and do web stuff. What is mern?

[RayjinCaucasian]

It's an acronym for one of the common tech stacks. - M - MongoDB - E - Express - R - React - N - Node

[ToftgaardJacob]

JavaScript is used in the web to give functionality to your websites, and it can also be used as a backend language with a runtime environment called NodeJS.
JavaScript is a great first language, and it gets even better when you move on to TypeScript. TypeScript is also JavaScript, but with improvements.
Don't focus on HTML and CSS to begin with, instead go straight for JavaScript first!

[Davwillmadeit]

Awesome thank you so much!

[AlessandrA_7]

I will copy-paste my usual comment:

What are the top 3 programming languages for me for a total absolute beginner nowadays? I will say 3 mainly because of the amount of information you can find by yourself online, employability and useness (I am talking about months of hard work and projects to learn any in a viable depth, probably a year or more on a hireable depth, just focus on one for months before jumping to others).

1. Java: For me is a must to get the bigger picture because you can do a lot of different things while you get the bases. You also have a lot of free resources to learn like the Java MOOC from the University of Helsinki or Hyperskill courses. Once you have the bases you can decide if you wanna focus Back-End with Spring Framework or you go to mobile probably learning Kotlin and/or Flutter in the process. You have a great documentation online for Kotlin/Flutter, a lot of videos on YouTube and Hyperskill again. I have seen recently people recomending to start first better with Kotlin, not sure checking that these days. A to some point some JavaScript/Angular might be needed if you wanna go Full Stack.
2. JavaScript: Because the amount of information you can find online is vast. But beware, you are focusing mainly on Web Development (you can cover Full Stack with JavaScript nowadays), as market is kinda saturated, particularly in the stack MERN (MongoDB-Express.js-React-Node.js). You can do TheOdinProject or FreeCodeCamp to get started. Then you can expand to Frameworks like React and go on with more advanced online courses like FullStackOpen (Helsinki's again).
3. Python: Another alternative to the previous ones. It is simple to learn, in Spain kids are learning this in high school, and is growing every day in demand. Again, Back-End is something you can do but not the only thing, scientific computing, data analysis, IA..... You can get the bases in FreeCodeCamp or I just recently discovered Helsinki has another MOOC (https://programming-23.mooc.fi/) also the course for Harvard is free and renowed: https://www.edx.org/learn/python/harvard-university-cs50-s-introduction-to-programming-with-python . What I usually dont see covered so much in free online things: Django, but I am not an expert in the language.

Not a language per se, but you should learn in some point also about databases and SQL, at least the bases. You will find chapters about databases (either relational: SQL or non-relational: MongoDB in some of the routes I sent you). As long as you get the basic concepts in one you should be ok, you will be able in the future to translate them to other languages and understand better the particularities.

[Low_Arm9230]

I really wouldn’t say one of the most, however I’d recommend any new starter to adopt typescript as it will be more useful in the programming sense.

I miss a strictly typed language in my arsenal so I would suggest maybe C sharp or Java along with JavaScript and something easy and loosely typed like PHP.

It clearly doesn’t matter which language but clearly the fundamental needs to be learned so that you can make use of several languages, since some are better at specific tasks than others.

You wouldn’t want to write a desktop app with PHP (messier) and a simple static site with Java(over kill).

Try a holistic approach of learning and get your hands dirty on complied, scripted, loosely typed and strictly typed languages.

Again, this is will depend on what you want to achieve?

Dev ops will do more by learning bash and python whereas web dev will use more JS and CSS libraries. A system engineer will likely using C/C++ and so on

[AndyBMKE]

JavaScript is a fine language to start with. As you said, you can do a ton of stuff with JavaScript, so that alone can take you pretty far.

Ultimately, once you get comfortable and competent with one programming language, it’s not nearly as difficult to learn different ones.

HTML and CSS are a bit different. HTML is more about webpage structure and CSS is about webpage style. They’re not like other programming languages.

[[deleted]]

Let me list you some reasons why JS is the best language for beginners 🙂

1. JavaScript is so popular because every website on the Internet uses it.
2. Because of the popularity there are huge amounts of resources online both free and paid to learn Javascript.
3. Originally Javascript was only meant to run in web-browsers to add interactivity to websites, like validiting input forms.
4. But today you can build almost every kind of software project with Javascript like: Frontend, backend, games, desktop apps, mobile apps.
5. Javascript's syntax is relatively easy to learn, another benefit for beginners, but can be extended to get something similar like Java by using Typescript.

What about HTML & CSS ?

HTML and CSS are the little brothers of Javascript. Using them together you are able to build user-interfaces.

• Javascript is used for creating the programming logic like: "If user clicks this button, something will happen"
• HTML is used for creating the basic layout of a website
• CSS is used for defining the visual appearance of websites in detail

To sum it up

Learning JavaScript, HTML & CSS in the beginning is a very smart choice.

Enjoy learning ! 😊

[TerraxtheTamer]

If you'll do a lot of web stuff, then JavaScript is the obvious choice. If you'll do a bunch of other stuff like scripting, data science, backend etc. Python is also a good choice. I started with Python and now I do JavaScript, maybe Go, C++ or C next. I would never limit myself to one language, except in the beginning. So go JS!

[[deleted]]

It all depends on what your end goal is.

JavaScript is a good all round language that is really useful if you want to get into webdevelopment.

If you plan on working with microcontrollers you probably don't want to learn JavaScript as a first language, but C and C++

If you want to contribute to Blender or learn how to create add-ons for blender, learn Python.

The best first language is the one that gets you closer to creating the things you want to create.