JavaScript languished from 2009–2015 without a single release. But in 2015, rapid innovation became the new normal. JavaScript and its technical committee, the TC39, has committed to annual releases every June, and continues to work hard to assure ongoing backward compatibility. Innovative projects like Babel mean you need not wait for these features to be broadly supported to put them to use. You can transpile experimental features and use them today. If plain JavaScript isn’t to your team’s taste, there are literally dozens of mature languages that compile down to JavaScript today such as TypeScript from Microsoft.
JavaScript’s de facto package manager, npm, is the largest and fastest growing package manager in the world. There are over half a million packages in npm today. Thanks to projects like Node.js, Electron, and React Native, you can write web apps, native mobile apps, web APIs, server-side processes, and even desktop apps using JavaScript. They say software is eating the world. For all these reasons, much of that software is written in JavaScript. It’s not just for the web anymore. Today’s JavaScript is like Visa. It’s everywhere you want to be.
Cory House - Pluralsight Author