- Front end development refers to code
that drives user interactions
on a webpage or mobile application.
The animations, forms, colors and dynamism
that make applications have a sense of movement and depth
all come from front end development.
For years, your only option for running code
on the browser was JavaScript,
which was built for the web.
JavaScript in the browser is mostly focused
on manipulating HTML and CSS
to make web pages interactive
and doing client side server requests
to asynchronously update information on the page.
Both Google and Facebook have invested significantly
in JavaScript by developing open source libraries
and frameworks that allow you
to make complex user-driven single page applications.
React, developed by Facebook,
with over 170,000 stars on GitHub,
is slightly more popular based on some developer surveys,
however, Angular, developed by Google,
also has a strong community and user base.
While previously, Native mobile applications
were thought of as requiring knowledge
of the Apple language Swift, or Kotlin for Android,
libraries like React Native and Native Script
now allow JavaScript developers
to also create Native applications using the same language
they use to develop for the web.
JavaScript's monopoly on the browser
has recently been challenged
by a new technology called Web Assembly
that allows you to run languages
such as Python or C++ in the browser.
Web Assembly is in its early adoption stages,
so JavaScript is still doing most of the heavy lifting
with regards to front end web development.
So if developing slick user interfaces
is what you're dreaming of
when you think of your software engineering career,
JavaScript is your best bet right now,
but as with everything in this industry,
that could change soon.