This post was originally published at kais.blog.

Let's move your learning forward together! Follow me on Twitter for your daily dose of developer tips. Thanks for reading my content!

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It's the start of a new year. Many new year's resolutions are broken already. Nevertheless, have you ever thought about learning a new programming language in the new year? Why not start today? Here, I'll give you 7 reasons why you should start learning JavaScript in 2021!

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JavaScript is the most popular language

According to StackOverflow's Developer Survey 2020, JavaScript is the most commonly used programming language among developers. And that's for the eighth year in a row. Its popularity is even higher if you only look at professional developers.

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JavaScript's ecosystem is huge

The popularity results in tons of tutorials and libraries. I mean it. With npm you have the largest package registry in the world - available at your fingertips. Also, millions of developers use JavaScript every day. And many of them aren't silent. You'll find a gigantic amount of tutorials in this mysterious thing called Internet.

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JavaScript is omnipresent

You are interested in backend, frontend or fullstack development? You want to create a web, desktop or mobile application? Or you dream of becoming a game developer? Everything is possible with JavaScript nowadays. Also, if you've ever heard of serverless functions - for those you can use JavaScript, too.

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JavaScript is the language of browsers

I hear you WebAssembly (WASM). JavaScript is not the only one. However, JavaScript is here to stay and WASM won't change this in the near future. If you are working on anything web-related there's (more or less) no way around JavaScript. You can create your backend in C# or Java, but if you are working in the frontend you'll probably have to face JavaScript.

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JavaScript is fast and efficient

Ever heard of Netflix or PayPal? Those two companies and a lot of other big and small names made the switch to JavaScript (Node.js). They found their web apps to be significantly faster and cheaper. Also, they took less time to develop and need less maintenance overall. A win-win situation.

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JavaScript is easy and fun to learn

Okay, that point is a bit more opinionated. However, with so many available tutorials, ebooks and interactive playgrounds, learning JavaScript is a fun endeavour. It's really easy to get started.

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JavaScript is constantly evolving

For some, this may be a negative. I find this very positive. JavaScript is constantly changing (for the better, in my opinion). New features and constructs are added regularly. With the rise of Babel and TypeScript you can use language features that aren't generally available yet. How cool is that!

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Conclusion

Learning JavaScript in 2021 is a no-brainer. If you want to kickstart your developer career, JavaScript is worth a look. For some specific use-cases, other programming languages are ahead. However, you can always transfer your knowledge later to a certain extent. So, my recommendation for this year is: Learn JavaScript!

Well, actually, my language of choice is TypeScript. It's a superset of JavaScript. Think of it as a layer on top of JavaScript adding many awesome features to the language. If I've sparked your interest, check out these 6 Reasons Why You Should Learn TypeScript in 2021

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Let's move your learning forward together! Follow me on Twitter for your daily dose of developer tips. Thanks for reading my content!

This post was originally published at kais.blog.

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Cover Background Image by @grakozy (unsplash.com)