1.1 Introduction to JavaScript - Video Tutorials & Practice Problems

<v Instructor>JavaScript was originally developed</v> by computer scientist Brendan Eich as part of Netscape Corporation. In particular, it was designed to run inside the first commercial web browser called Netscape Navigator. The most common use of JavaScript is still the original use, which is to make cool things happen on webpages, essentially to make dynamic HTML happen. But in fact, as mentioned in the introduction, JavaScript is increasingly used as a general purpose programming language. So as a result, we're going to get a quick start in this section on both the in-browser use and the general purpose use. So this will begin the theme of our four main methods for learning JavaScript. Number one is, front-end JavaScript, running in the user's browser, just regular webpages. Second, will be using what's called a read-evaluate-print loop or REPL using an important technology called Node.js. Third is standalone JavaScript files including use of the node package manager or NPM and finally shells script as briefly introduced in Learn Enough Text Editor To Be Dangerous. We'll take things to the next level in this tutorial. In this chapter, we're going to use all four of these techniques to make variations on the venerable Hello, World style program that dates all the way back to the origins of the C programming language used to write Unix. Speaking of which, throughout this entire tutorial, I will assume that you have access to a Unix style computing platform. If you use MacOS, like I am here, or Linux or the cloud IDE recommended in the text, you'll automatically have access to a Unix system, but it still might require some configuration. So whether you're using one of those systems or if you're using Windows, I suggest taking a look at Learn Enough Dev Environment to be Dangerous and make sure that you're set up with a command line and a text editor along with Git for version control. Once you've got that set up, you'll be ready to take the first step, which is to run a JavaScript in a web browser.