I want to take a few moments and discuss some of the reasons I think it is important to learn JavaScript. First, JavaScript is the language of the web. Now, it's not the only language used on the internet, but it is probably the most important is found in every browser. Therefore, any HTML page can render JavaScript. And JavaScript is used extensively throughout the web. Contrary to what a lot of people may think JavaScript is a very mature language.

There may have been a time when it was first developed that it was really the little brother of languages. But since that time, it has matured, and it contains a lot of the features that very mature languages and programmers love to use. So that's another reason to learn JavaScript. A nice thing about JavaScript is it doesn't require an expensive or a fancy program. To write the code to compile it, or any of that, all you need to write JavaScript is a simple text editor. And most text editors are free.

They don't cost you anything. JavaScript is also a very flexible language. Now, what is it that I mean by that? Well, JavaScript has a lot of different ways that you can solve problems. And, and that is what I mean by flexible. For example, JavaScript could be used as a procedural language.

Or you could do functional programming with JavaScript. Or you can do object oriented coding with JavaScript using the way JavaScript implements objects. So a lot of different ways to approach different problems. And that makes JavaScript very flexible. JavaScript is now able to do full stack development. Now what is it that I mean with full stack development Well, let's take a look at a diagram.

Traditionally, JavaScript was only used on the HTML page, the JavaScript is interpreted, rendered by the browser, and then it causes the HTML page to have certain functionality or, or does something for the HTML page. Well, that has changed. JavaScript is not just for the browser anymore. Now in order to create a full application on the web, you can't just use HTML in the browser, you need to connect to a server on the back end, and you need to do some processing on the back end, you need to have a database that stores your data. And you need to be able to grab that data, send data back and forth, and then populate that data within an HTML page and show the user the data that you've pulled from the database. That is what I mean by full stack develop So in this diagram at the very bottom is the HTML page.

That's traditionally where JavaScript has been used. But there are now frameworks that have been built and are available to make that development. Not not just more powerful, but allows you to do a lot more with JavaScript. Angular is one of those. Now, I mentioned the server is important. No j s, is now available and has been available for several years to run a server and with Express, it completes the whole server piece.

So you can connect to the server, get the data you need from the server and then display it in the HTML page. MongoDB is a database. It's a database whose query language is JavaScript. Now when MongoDB passes data to the server, it's done with JSON Which is based on JavaScript. And when JSON is passed to the HTML page, that's also based on JavaScript. So the one thing that all of these pieces have in common is JavaScript.

Now in the past, the server piece had to be programmed with something like Perl or PHP, or Python, or Ruby, a language such as that. It's no longer necessary. With no js and express you can do everything in JavaScript. So now you have JavaScript on the front end. The HTML piece, you have it on the server side with no js and express and you have it in the database with MongoDB. JavaScript when it was first developed was built to be easy for beginners.

Some people see this as a negative because it makes the language a little more forgiving. But as long as you learn to use JavaScript Effectively, I think it's a positive, it allows people to enter in and learn JavaScript much faster. And so I see that as a positive. Finally, what I think is one of the most important reasons to learn JavaScript is you need to learn it so that you don't just get by learn all of its capability so you can take advantage of those capabilities when you're working with it. So now that you've been properly motivated, let's go ahead and start learning some JavaScript.