JAVASCRIPT CONQUERED THE WEB. NOW
IT’S TAKING OVER THE DESKTOP


JAVASCRIPT WAS ORIGINALLY created in 1995 to give web
pages a little more pep than the <blink> tag could provide.
Today it has far more powerful uses. Companies like Google
and Facebook build complex, desktop-like web applications
with JavaScript; since the launch of Node.js in 2009, it’s also
become one of the most popular languages for building server-
side software. Today, even the web isn’t big enough to contain
JavaScript’s versatility: it’s now making its way into
applications for the desktop.

Electron is a software development platform created by Github
that lets developers use JavaScript along with other web
technologies like HTML and CSS to create desktop applications
that can run on Windows, Macintosh OS X, and Linux. The
company released the first full version of Electron yesterday.
But some of tech’s biggest names have already put the tool to
work to push JavaScript beyond the browser.

Last year, Microsoft released a code editor called Visual Studio
Code that was built using Electron. Workplace chat unicorn
Slack uses Electron to build its desktop client. The startup
Nylas (formerly known as Inbox) used Electron to build an
entire email client. And Brave, a company founded by
JavaScript creator Brendan Eich, used Electron to build a
whole new web browser.
Why are all these companies using JavaScript when there are
countless other ways to build desktop applications? Well,
consider the rise of JavaScript on the server. Developers
already had scores of ways to build server-side web
applications when Node.js came along. But it became
enormously popular anyway because developers could now use
the same language to write both the browser-side and server-
side portions of their apps. It turns out it’s useful to have a
lingua franca for the web. And that ubiquity makes JavaScript’s
migration to the desktop a natural next step.

The startup Jibo, for example, is using Electron to power its
robotic personal assistant because the team wanted to make it
easy for third-party developers to write their own software for
the robot. “We wanted to make the barrier to entry as low as
possible,” says Jibo developer Jonathan Ross. “So we knew right
off the bat that we wanted to market to game developers and
web developers.”

Read more by viewing the whole piece here:
http://www.wired.com/2016/05/javascript-conquered-web-now-taking-desktop/?utm_source=javascriptweekly&utm_medium=email

Let's see how it goes. As long as they can get it to be robust enough because that "conquering desktop" idea would require it to be more than just that.

Anyways, android came after and see how far its come. So, all in all, OpenSource is still the best way to go!

chachanga:
Let's see how it goes. As long as they can get it to be robust enough because that "conquering desktop" idea would require it to be more than just that.

Anyways, android came after and see how far its come. So, all in all, OpenSource is still the best way to go!

You are right. Open Source idea is very powerful. About robustness...... JavaScript is getting more robust everyday with frameworks and libraries. Even the latest version if d lang ES6 dat has just been released is another beast. They are even working on ES7 now. Node.js package ecosystem, npm is the largest ecosystem of open source libraries in the World.