JavaScript Trends in 2020

If you are someone who thinks that in this 2020 JavaScript will lose the leadership that it has maintained for 7 consecutive years in the preference of programmers… you should reconsider your position. With a resounding 67.8%, JScript continues to be, by far, the preferred programming, markup and scripting language among developers worldwide.

JavaScript is not old. It is an adult.

Although its original release dates back to 1995, as its platforms and libraries have grown so has its popularity. In terms of dynamic and global web development, no one doubts that the JS universe continues ruling.

However, continuously, new frameworks are added to its library and broaden the horizons of JavaScript. These additions have been very well accepted among developers, who have used them to produce web applications, systems and software that use the JS libraries as the core.

This is not going to change this year, so if you are looking for (or are) a JavaScript developer, it is better to take into account the trends that will prevail in 2020.

What is expected of Javascript in 2020?

ReactJS will continue doing its thing

Despite the fact that Vue gained ground last year, ReactJS remains the developer’s favorite: 64% of them have used it and indicate that they will gladly continue using it. The margin over its closest competing frameworks, Vue and Angular, is huge.

React was created by Facebook, and is here to stay. It is not by chance that many successful platforms such as WhatsApp, Netflix, Airbnb and the NY Times have taken it as their own: it is the perfect user interface design library for making cross-platform applications and responsive single-page apps.

Other new advantages are seen in its new modes: concurrent and suspense. Thanks to them, the applications created with React will respond better representing trees without blocking the threads. Thanks to React 16.8, you won’t even need to write a separate class to use these features.

So this year companies are going to hire ReactJS developers to create advanced and more technology-backed applications. It is time to study, then.

Betting on state management

In the last quarter of 2019 the expression State management has gained popularity among JavaScript developers. Managing state is equivalent to saying managing the effect that is created in response to user actions.

Although state management was contained in the Redux global repository, React version 16.3.0 introduces a call that may replace Redux in state management. This is implemented to reuse JavaScript components to manage states: previously for a React component tree, you had to pass “global” data manually. Now, the React Contex API allows data to be used using components at nesting levels, without writing any code.

So the trend this year is to manage status at the functional component level and not at the global storage level of applications.

Angular in second, but stable

Although it lost its position in 2015 to React’s popularity, Angular is still one of the front-end development leaders in JScript.

Its Angular 9 update seeks to ensure that the Angular Ivy Compiler is available to all applications, because many developers still love it.

In 2020 Angular hopes to rise above React and Vue on the list of the most used JavaScript frameworks. Their approach is simple: fix bugs and offer new features. Among this new capabilities  the effort to increase the application´s performance at the loading time stand out. To do this, Angular Ivy creates different polyfills, but only loads the ones that are really used. This reduces the loading time significantly.

Another addition is the functionality of using selector-less directives as base classes (not in Angular 8), and internalizes standard code generation for translators.

Isolate framework components and make them independent

This is another of the great JavaScript revolutions coming  this year. By making the components independent of their frameworks, the language gains in modularity, reuse, encapsulation and code standardization.

This seeks to make systems more compatible with modern browsers. Projects working on them are using VDOM. Using custom-built elements to create new HTML tags, independently reusable with or without framework seems to be a trend this year.

Bit.dev rises

For the above reason, the popularity of this tool is constantly increasing, and in 2020 it is predicted that it will win the hearts of more developers. Thanks to it, the components of the frames or projects can be separated and reused, either with a little adjustment or as they are.

Bit.dev therefore allows reusable code components to be shared, which is most beneficial for companies that are outsourcing their JavaScript development and seeking development consistency with the external team.

Within dedicated teams of a company, the code for these components can be quickly used by members of any project. Thus, they can be enriched and synchronized in an agile and expeditious way for their future use.

In summary

Although they are much based on logic and everything points to predictions that are going to be fulfilled, it should be borne in mind that these are only the main trends in how JavaScript will evolve by 2020. So far this year, these changes are taking place in the community of developers of this language and in how they use it to create new software and applications.

With these changes in the JS universe, companies that are committed to developing applications of this programming language have a more advanced approach, in tune with the use of the latest components in their projects. So if you want to join a JavaScript development company, it is better that you begin to familiarize yourself with these trends to create state-of-the-art software.