Lately we’ve been witnessing the rise of SPA (Single Page Application) frameworks and if you’re a front-end developer, it might be hard to get a job without knowing React.js. But who says that the most popular is always the best? It’s like the story of “The King is Naked!”. It’s time for an awakening for those who want to write the fastest JavaScript! So why is JavaScript popular? Which is the most used library in the world? We have compiled the answers to all the questions you are curious about in this list.
Why is JavaScript popular?
It can be used end-to-end (FullStack): JavaScript can be used for both front-end and back-end development. This means that you can develop the visual part of your website (front-end) and the server side (back-end) with a single coding language. This is a great convenience for developers because you can develop a full application with JavaScript knowledge. 
Easy learning: JavaScript is a very easy language to learn. Thanks to its simple syntax and extensive documentation, even beginners can quickly grasp the basics. This makes JavaScript an attractive option for beginners. 
Ease of execution: JavaScript is a language that can run directly in a web browser. That is, you can write and run code immediately with just a browser, without requiring any additional software or compiler. 
There are so many libraries and frameworks in the JavaScript ecosystem that it can sometimes be hard to choose. Here are some of the most popular ones:
jQuery: jQuery is one of the libraries from the old but golden age of JavaScript. It is especially effective in DOM manipulation and animations. In short, jQuery is like a “candy” that makes JavaScript code simpler and more understandable! 
React.js: Developed by Facebook, React is a library used to create user interfaces. Thanks to its component-based architecture, it makes large and complex applications more manageable. Don’t get hung up on “components”; React excels in performance and flexibility
Vue.js: Vue.js is another popular library that is very easy to learn and use. You can start simple and increase the complexity as needed. Vue is a complete user-friendly package with an “inclusive” structure!
Angular: Developed by Google, Angular is a powerful and comprehensive framework. With features like data binding and dependency injection, it is an ideal choice for large-scale applications. But beware, Angular can be a bit “heavy”!
When jQuery was released, JavaScript was not as popular as it is today because the code you wrote could work in one browser but not in another. This problem was called cross-browser compatibility.
jQuery solved this problem with many ‘if’ cases built into the code. For example, if a browser supports property X, use it; if it doesn’t, refer to a Y method that does the same thing; if that doesn’t work, provide property X with custom code. However, this kind of structure was not ideal for front-end development because it increased the library size. jQuery had competitors, some of them were better than jQuery for animations (like mootools), but their file size was much larger than jQuery. In the end, jQuery beat its competitors with its small file size.
jQuery wasn’t designed for speed; it was designed for cross-browser compatibility, and it did it very well. Back then, when using JavaScript, you had to take into account that users could disable JavaScript in their browsers for security reasons. jQuery’s second big advantage was its ‘write less, do more’ philosophy. It simplified JavaScript coding and made it more efficient.
AngularJS arrives on the scene
Angular, developed by Google, came with many enterprise features and an integrated MVC structure. This structure was popular in back-end development languages but new in the JavaScript world. At first glance it seemed ideal for the corporate world, but it ignored a very important problem: It had to be downloaded before it could be used as a front-end tool, and the file size was huge compared to jQuery. Despite this, Angular was very popular and not knowing it 5-7 years ago would have made it difficult to get a job as a front-end developer.
React had a smaller file size than Angular and encouraged you to do everything in the front-end with JavaScript. Instead of writing HTML, you were writing in React. However, web standards developers often have more experience than React developers. While React is faster than Angular, it is not suitable for e-commerce and enterprise sites where speed is important. React may be good for game development, but our priority in this article is fast loading and execution.
Despite all the marketing efforts, React.js is not the most used framework in the world – neither is Angular or Vue. jQuery is still the king! You can find up-to-date information about the usage rates of all JavaScript frameworks used in the world from W3Tech’s reports. Of course, the fact that WordPress and various open source content management systems use jQuery is also effective in these rates. But even if we remove WordPress (~43%), jQuery still has a much higher percentage than the others.
TypeScript is JavaScript with superpowers! 
This amazing language eliminates those “aaah, what’s that error?” moments you get when writing code in JavaScript. How? TypeScript adds strict type checking on top of JavaScript, making your code safer and more error-free. In other words, by predetermining the variable types of the code you write, you can catch potential errors while you are still writing your code. 
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