2024: Javascript and Typescript are Going to Become Even Stronger

The reality is that JavaScript dominates the web application programming world, and it isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Knowing this, the importance of client-side security and JavaScript security becomes apparent. Organizations will need to automate their monitoring and inspection solutions to help protect their client side.

I am a senior software engineer, mostly doing web-based stuff (10+ years). I have over 8 programming languages under my belt, including Javascript, Python, Java, and more. I have a few predictions for the upcoming year based on my experience and seeing how things work in the field. What I think basically comes down to this:

Javascript and Typescript are going to become even stronger.

With web-based technologies finding their way to more types of devices, including IoT devices and hand-held devices, and the movement towards Progressive Web Apps, I predict that web languages like Javascript and Typescript will gain even more attraction.

They are easy, simple to learn, with no major learning curve, and huge, strong communities are only some of the advantages these languages have. Typescript, a superset of Javascript, improves on it vastly by introducing types that allow you to prevent errors and make the development experience much nicer.

The open-source community and libraries using those two languages seem to be growing exponentially over the past couple of years and don’t seem to be slowing down.

Python is another runner-up which has many of the pros the web-based languages have. Also, most of the AI work is based entirely on Python and it is a rapidly growing field. This gives Python a competitive edge that won’t die down anytime soon.

Python overtook Java as the technical interview language of choice in 2020. Karat has conducted over 75,000 technical interviews on behalf of organizations hiring software engineers, and in 2020 we saw Python overtake Java as our top interview language of choice for candidates.

Python tends to be a preferred language for AI/ML-focused and cloud-native programmers compared to Java which is used more in legacy businesses. This is significant, and as companies continue to undergo digital transformation and cloud initiatives.

This has been especially true this year as the shift to remote work has accelerated the trend, and we expect to conduct even more technical interviews with those new roles and skillsets in mind in the year ahead.

Tech stacks are changing as more companies migrate to the cloud. Cloud providers such as AWS only support Java, C#, Python, and Node. These are more popular and robust languages. Could the pandemic affect the popularity of programming languages? Yes. Languages that have associated costs suffer during slower economic times. I’ve been in the industry for 24 years and I see the job req changes during economic downturns. Easier to learn languages that allow entry into IT to see a big boost during the pandemic. We’re getting more and more requests for front-end only languages. This is an indication that companies are accepting less technical backgrounds. More structured languages require specialization usually (e.g. web, apps, etc.)

Learning a language is a skill that you have to acquire. Most developers and particularly consultants don’t change languages due to slower times. The amount of jobs available allows everyone to find their lane.