Human-readable JavaScript

Ever since the inception of the computers, humans have learnt the languages that a computer can understand, in order to interact and manipulate it to work in the way we need.  But humans are now able to easily use and manipulate computers with the help of high-level programming languages.

One such high level programming language is  Javascript, shortly referred to as JS. It is a crucial part of web development which uses HTML (Hypertext Markup Language -for the skeletal overview), CSS (Cascading Style Sheets – for styling the websites) and Javascript (to help in making the website dynamic and responsive). It is imperative, structured and also object oriented. Without Javascript, a user will not be able to interact at all with any website and will only be able to access a static website with information loaded on it.

Based on readability, Data formats are of two types,

Machine readable – Data formats meant for the machines to process and execute, and

Human readable – Data formats that are meant for humans to understand.

Javascript is considered as a human readable  language. I.e it is a machine language which is also easy for humans to read and understand.

Being a human readable language, javascript has various advantages such as,

Makes it easy for all the team members to understand the program while developing:

This is the most obvious advantage of any human readable language. Oftentimes engineers find it hard to read and understand programs written by a different developer. This figuring out process consumes a lot of time and energy. Although companies have adopted various methods such as usage of comments or following the same method of programming by all the developers so that everyone in the team can understand it, using a human readable language will be way easier and more comfortable compared to the other options.

While writing a library or a plugin:

Libraries and plugins are sources that other developers might find use from and hence it is important that they should be able to easily read what is written in the code so as to be able to use or manipulate it. Human readable languages are a boon in these situations as they make the task of understanding the programs so much easier.

Easier to learn, write and debug:

As much as a human readable language is easy to read, it is also easy to learn the language, write in it and also debug as it is going to be simpler especially when compared to the assembly or low-level programming languages. Projects and tasks can be completed faster while using a human readable language.

There are also a few drawbacks when it comes to using a human readable language over a machine-readable language. Some of the important drawbacks include:

The effect of these drawbacks can vary from insignificant to severe based on the kind of project being developed. Therefore, one has to be careful and compare their requirements with what the various languages provide, their pros and cons before deciding on which language will be best for their project.

Conclusion:

Javascript is known to be used by over 97% of the websites on the client side for webpage behavior. It is the ideal language for developing web pages and its human readability now assists millions of internet users to understand the program behind the websites they explore. Although it has its cons, the amount of advantages Javascript provides is huge and we can comfortably say that Javascript is a language that is here to stay for a very long time.