Growth In JavaScript usage for Industries
JavaScript is a lightweight, interpreted programming language. It is designed for creating network-centric applications. It is complimentary to and integrated with Java. JavaScript is very easy to implement because it is integrated with HTML. It is open and cross-platform.
There’s no denying that JavaScript is everywhere. JavaScript is immensely important, and that doesn’t look like it’s going to change any time soon.
JavaScript varies by industry. The top industries are:
- finance: 7%
- advertising and marketing: 5%
- education: 5%
- entertainment: 5%
- business support and logistics: 4%
- healthcare: 4%
- retail: 3%
- government: 2%
- manufacturing: 2%
Angular was a fairly popular choice across all industries, but strongest in finance. Developers in entertainment were the least likely to use Angular, their strongest preference being for React (65%).
React was the most popular framework in the survey overall, though with strong variations by industry. As mentioned, 65% of developers in entertainment chose it, but that fell to 46% in government and 38% in manufacturing. Manufacturing’s strongest choice for a framework was jQuery (52%), suggesting the industry is a late adopter. Government also had jQuery as its top pick at 52%.
Around 20% of developers in most industries reported using Vue, though it was notably more popular in advertising, with 34% of developers reporting it there.
Ember did not get a lot of mention from our respondents, with an average of 4% of developers reporting that they used it. Also in this range were Preact (5%), Hapi (5%), Next.js (5%), and Meteor (5%).
A surprisingly popular choice was Electron, which is obviously not a web framework at all but we included in our options. More than 20% of developers in every industry reported using Electron for some projects.
Microsoft
Microsoft needs to work closely with JavaScript to built its Edge web browser. All browsers need to process and execute JavaScript efficiently, so Microsoft has developed and maintains its own JavaScript engine for Edge. Recently, Microsoft has really embraced NodeJS. They thoroughly support Node on the Azure cloud platform. Its one of Azure’s major features, and they’ve integrated Visual Studio support for Node.
PayPal
PayPal has obviously been using JavaScript on the front end of their website for a long time, but that’s only the beginning. The online payment giant was one of the earliest adopters of NodeJS. During an overhaul of their account overview page, they decided to try building the page in Node at the same time as their usual Java development. The NodeJS version worked out so well, that they chose to use it in production and build all client-facing applications in Node going forward. That means that most of what you see in your account is running on Node.
Netflix
Like PayPal, Netflix started out using Java for just about everything. They too ran into problems with Java’s size and the time it required to develop. Over time, Netflix moved away from its more traditional structure into the cloud and started to introduce NodeJS. With Node, Netflix was able to break down pieces of their user interface into individual services. This more distributed approach was able to speed things up an alleviate stress on their servers. Today, a large portion of Netflix’s interface is running on Node.
Uber
Uber needs to handle loads of data in real time. They have millions of requests coming in continuously, and that’s not just hits on a page. Uber needs to track driver locations, rider locations, and incoming ride requests. It has to seamlessly sort that data and match riders as fast as possible. All of that plays to NodeJS’s and JavaScript’s strengths. Node is designed to handle requests and hand off data quickly. It’s asynchronous capabilities are a huge part of that. Node is central to Uber’s user facing stack for just that reason.