So now that we know for whom this module is,
let me summarize javascript briefly.
Javascript is a weakly typed programming language,
it's an object oriented programming language
and it's very versatile
and what do you mean with that? Weakly type
means that we have no explicit type assignment,
javascript knows types like numbers or text which is called string or booleans which is true or false
but it doesn't force you to define which type you're using in a variable or in a function
and indeed, you can also have a variable where you store a number which you then suddenly change to a
text variable,
so you can switch types dynamically. In other languages this is differently
and whilst this gives you greater flexibility to be able to change it and to not have strict typing,
it also can lead to errors,
so it is just something you have to be aware of.
Object oriented simply means that data can be organized in logical objects and we'll see these objects
in this module.
And one important concept here is that you have to be aware about the difference of primitive and reference
types and attached to this lecture,
you'll find a link to an article and video I created for my free YouTube channel, Academind where I
do dive into primitive and reference types and where I do explain the difference and why they are important,
so definitely check that out if primitive and reference types don't tell you anything. Regarding the
versatility,
well we can see that in this course.
Javascript runs in the browser and this is actually where it comes from but you can also use it with
nodejs to run it on your PC
outside of a browser set up or also on a server
therefore and that is exactly what we'll do in this course.
We'll build a web server with nodejs,
so we got this broad versatility of being able to use javascript on different platforms. And you can
also perform a broad variety of tasks with javascript also depending on the platform you're running
on.
You can in the browser listen to user events, re-render the DOM and on the server or on a PC, you
can work with files, with databases,
lot of cool stuff.
So this is a summary of javascript and what makes up the language,
let's now dive into some core features, also some core next generation javascript features which are supported
by nodejs
and let's see some things we'll see throughout the course.