Many fictional universes, whether sci-fi or fantasy, have some sort of common language, some way for beings of disparate backgrounds to communicate. In real life, English seems to be trending that direction, due in large part to the colonial history of its native speakers. I’m no linguistic scientist, but I imagine if a group of such experts were to get together and pick a language to use as “common” based on simplicity, ease of learning, those sorts of factors; English wouldn’t make the top five. Consider these words: taught, though, thought, through, throughout, thorough, tough. Learning English is as much about learning exceptions to rules as it is about learning the rules themselves. It’s prevalence worldwide has nothing to do with its stylistic or effective qualities.
In the world of programming languages, Javascript seems a fine analog to English. Oh boy does it have some quirks. I remember the first time I initialized a variable pointing to an array, then invoked the typeof operand on that variable and received “object” in return. Nuts! And yet, because of Javascript’s integration to the internet, you are hard pressed to find a list of popular programming languages that does not rank Javascript towards the top. Internet speeds will continue to increase, as will internet availability, and Javascript’s “market-share” will grow with them.
The analogy between Javascript and the “common” language of fictional worlds came to me when I was researching the WebAudio API. I was expecting it to be a simple system for playing audio on a webpage, and I was shocked to find all the building blocks for music production: oscillators, filters, delays, filters, audio buffers. Interested in graphics? Check out the WebGL API. Both of these technologies are new-ish and not as powerful or user-friendly as the stand-alone professional software in their respective domains, but they are free, still growing, and open-source frameworks built upon these APIs are increasing accessibility. All a person needs is some basic JS knowledge and they can begin experimenting.
Javascript has secured its place in history because of web integration. If it can gain ground in popularity for domain specific technologies like audio and graphics production, Javascript could really become a nexus for creation and communication, the common-tongue of the digital future.