What is the state of JavaScript?

This JavaScript thing is really catching on eh? As the name suggests, “the state of JavaScript” survey gives a snapshot view of JavaScript development. What everyone (over 20,000 developers anyway) is using and enjoying or otherwise. It also gives a general sense of the direction things are going in. As with the StackOverflow survey, I found it well worth a read. It’s also beautifully presented.

Some of my main takeaways:

  • React is where it’s at from a front-end framework perspective
  • Express seems to be the stable go to back-end framework for Node.js
  • GraphQL appears to be the rising star of the data layer, but Redux is the player to beat
  • There seems to be a range of good options with testing, but the community seemed to enjoy Jest the most
  • Building desktop and mobile apps using JavaScript seem to be a two player game at present. Electron for desktop and React Native for mobile. This space does have some competition on the rise though. Flutter looks particularly interesting
  • VS Code dominates text editors by such a large margin, I really need to give it a second look. I haven’t seen anything that makes me think I’ll move from Atom but I’m open to the possibility

Have you read the survey? Did I miss anything you found particularly interesting?


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