JavaScript: Type of Applications You Can Build Using this Language

The mobile application industry has continued to grow at an astonishing pace. Research projections estimate the revenue from mobile applications to exceed to $200 billion by the end of 2021. Thus, there is a race to develop successful mobile applications that have led many businesses to focus on building experienced in-house development teams or hiring remote JavaScript developers. 

There’s no denying that JavaScript is one of the most popular technologies in the tech industry today. While companies have traditionally hired JavaScript developers for frontend development, new tools and frameworks such as Node.js allowed expanding JavaScript to the backend as well. 

This article lists the most important types of applications that can be built using JavaScript – thus giving an insight into how versatile and handy this technology is.

6 Types of Applications that can be Built Using JavaScript

1. Web Applications

JavaScript has always been one of the most popular technologies for creating websites. This has been especially true for website frontend development owing to the wide range of frameworks, libraries, and tools. As browsers and computers improved over time, their abilities to support robust web applications improved significantly as well. 

Simple apps like Google Maps provide the benefit of offering a lot of information on a simple interface that hides its complex backend. Thanks to the variety of technologies such as Vue.JS, Angular.JS, and others, JavaScript development companies are today at the forefront of web applications development. It can be safely said that every modern web development project uses JavaScript or tools and frameworks based on it. Moreover, JavaScript serves not only as a tool for frontend developers, but also makes it possible to build an application backend using the framework Node.JS.

2. Server Applications

With the advent of Node.JS a few years ago, developers were able to extend JavaScript beyond the browser. Node.JS enabled developers to finally use JavaScript programming language on the server-side as well, leading to easier and faster development of desktop applications. JavaScript was since then adopted by some of the major companies as a key part of their backend infrastructures. Node.JS instilled a new life into this programming language and made it a popular choice among developers all over the world. 

3. Gaming Applications

The browser had previously never served as a core platform for gaming enthusiasts. This has changed in recent times making browser a robust space for games. The addition of the HTML5 further allowed developers to reach a new level of complexity in constructing browser-based games. 

By combining HTML5 with JavaScript, developers can now add more interactivity to make the gaming content more dynamic – which is just perfect for gaming purposes. Additionally, various APIs offer a number of different methods to draw all the elements that game designers want and then animate these elements with ease. The hired JavaScript developers can also use game frameworks that abstract the most boring parts of building games like handling shape animations to make their lives easier.

4. Smartwatch Applications

Smartwatches have become a rage in the last few years with most companies investing huge sums of money to create their apps for wearable devices. Developers looking to build applications running on smartwatches and other wearable devices can benefit a lot from JavaScript’s ecosystem of tools. 

A special framework, called NativeScript, exists today, which was created specifically to enable building native apps for iOS and Android, always based on JavaScript. 

JavaScript developers can easily integrate it with the programming language TypeScript or the famous JavaScript framework, Angular.JS.

5. Cross-Platform or Hybrid Mobile Applications

Majority of the companies launching their mobile apps want to be able to have a presence on Android as well as iOS. One of the benefits of JavaScript is that it allows developers to build applications for non-web context. This means that JavaScript can be used for applications that are not published on the internet. As types of mobile devices and their numbers grow, the cross-platform and hybrid mobile applications will become even more popular. It is now possible to write a single app that works on both platforms – for instance by using solutions such as React Native.

Cross-platform mobile app development has become a key trend today. It has allowed businesses to create mobile apps with JS that can be deployed and downloaded right into the respective app stores. React Native allows writing an app’s code in JavaScript and then converting the React components into native components of a mobile platform. This makes accessing hardware features so much easier for React Native – for example, it provides built-in support for camera and GPS.

Another way in which JavaScript development companies are using the language to build mobile applications is by choosing the hybrid app development approach. Hybrid frameworks allow writing apps using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to display the code in the browser view on mobile devices. Various native plugins are installed alongside to access hardware features such as a camera or GPS.

6. Internet of Things (IoT)

Internet of Things is the buzzword these days and JavaScript is the key language that helps in the development of its applications. Development teams use JS to build applications that control embedded hardware frameworks. The frameworks support full hardware access to motors, GPS, buttons, switches, etc., and Node.JS allows running JavaScript programs outside the browser.

JavaScript is, therefore, called one of the most popular programming languages in the world for a good reason. The sheer number and variety of applications you can build with it show the potential of JavaScript in powering future trends such as mobile applications, wearable technologies, and the Internet of Things.