The JavaScript ecosystem continues to thrive in 2024, with developers worldwide contributing to its evolution. The annual State of JavaScript survey is a fascinating snapshot of the community's preferences, challenges, and excitement around tools, libraries, and resources. Let’s dive into the key results from this year’s survey, compare them with 2023’s findings, and explore what these trends mean for JavaScript developers.
Features
2024 Highlights This year, JavaScript development has seen a significant surge in enthusiasm for modern features. Options like optional chaining, nullish coalescing, and template literals continue to be top favourites among developers. Notably, there's been a 15% increase in interest in temporal, the proposed API for enhanced date and time handling, compared to 2023. This shift highlights developers' preference for tools that simplify everyday coding challenges and address long-standing pain points like date manipulation.
JavaScript's ongoing evolution is evident in the increasing adoption of features that enhance efficiency and reliability in development workflows. The popularity of temporal reflects the community’s eagerness to embrace robust solutions for historically complex issues, underscoring the collective desire for improved core language features.
Libraries
The popularity contest among libraries remains fierce. React retains its crown as the most-used UI library, but SolidJS and Svelte saw significant jumps in adoption, with SolidJS experiencing a 20% increase in satisfaction. Meanwhile, Vue has maintained a loyal user base but with modest growth.
The rise of TanStack Query highlights the increasing importance of state management and data-fetching tools, as it garnered praise for its ease of use and performance.
Last year, Svelte was the breakout star, but 2024 seems to belong to SolidJS. This could indicate a trend toward libraries that emphasise performance and developer experience.
Other Tools
2024 Highlights The tools ecosystem showed exciting developments. Vite remains the undisputed champion of build tools, with a staggering 75% satisfaction rate. ESBuild continues to grow in adoption, while Parcel saw a slight decline.
Testing tools like Playwright and Cypress maintained their popularity, though Playwright edged ahead in satisfaction ratings. On the bundler front, Webpack usage has slightly decreased, reflecting its gradual replacement by modern alternatives.
Developers are prioritising tools that streamline workflows and enhance productivity, with faster build tools and modern testing frameworks leading the charge.
Usage
This year’s survey revealed a significant rise in TypeScript adoption, now used by 78% of respondents. This reflects its near-default status for many developers. Meanwhile, backend JavaScript usage, powered by Node.js, remains strong, with Deno gaining steady traction.
Browser APIs such as Web Workers and WebAssembly saw modest increases in adoption, showcasing developers’ growing interest in performance-oriented solutions.
Resources
Developers rely heavily on resources like MDN Web Docs, which remains the gold standard for web development documentation. FreeCodeCamp and JavaScript.info also saw increased usage, while newcomers like Web.dev gained attention for their performance-focused content.
The resource landscape hasn’t shifted dramatically, but the rise of Web.dev signals a growing awareness of web performance among developers. Paid courses and bootcamps, while still popular, faced competition from high-quality free content.
Deeper Dive into Features
The features category in the State of JavaScript survey provides a fascinating glimpse into how developers are using the latest capabilities of the language. Here, we’ll examine each category of features, highlight standout results, and provide deeper explanations with examples.
Syntax
One of the standout syntax features in 2024 is the use of optional chaining, which continues to dominate with high adoption rates. Compared to 2023, there’s a steady 5% increase in usage, showing how essential this feature has become in writing concise and safe code.
const user = {};
const street = user && user.address && user.address.street;Example: Consider accessing a deeply nested property without optional chaining:
With optional chaining, the same operation becomes much cleaner:
const street = user?.address?.street;This readability improvement explains its sustained popularity.
Data Handling
The Temporal API for date and time handling has seen a remarkable 15% increase in interest, making it one of the standout topics of 2024. Developers, who have long faced challenges with JavaScript’s native Date object, are eagerly anticipating Temporal's promise of a modern, robust alternative. While the Temporal API is not yet fully supported in browsers as of now, the growing adoption of polyfills such as the @js-temporal/polyfill and temporal-polyfill packages.demonstrates significant interest and a willingness within the developer community to embrace this powerful new tool.
const today = Temporal.Now.plainDateISO();
const tomorrow = today.add({ days: 1 });
console.log(tomorrow.toString());Example: Using Temporal to get the current date and add a day:
This intuitive API simplifies complex date manipulations.
Modules
Dynamic import usage has grown significantly, reflecting a 10% rise compared to 2023. This feature allows developers to load modules conditionally, improving performance by reducing initial bundle sizes.
if (condition) {
import('./module.js').then((module) => {
module.doSomething();
});
}Example: Dynamically importing a module
This flexibility makes dynamic imports a critical tool for modern JavaScript applications.
Async Patterns
2024 saw a boost in adoption of Promise.allSettled, reflecting its practicality in handling multiple promises where not all are guaranteed to succeed. Usage increased by 8% compared to 2023.
const promises = [fetch('/api/1'), fetch('/api/2')];
Promise.allSettled(promises).then((results) => {
results.forEach((result) => {
if (result.status === 'fulfilled') {
console.log('Success:', result.value);
} else {
console.log('Error:', result.reason);
}
});
});Example: Using Promise.allSettled
This feature enables resilient promise handling in complex workflows.
Other Features
Another standout is BigInt, which experienced a 6% increase in usage. As applications handle increasingly large datasets, BigInt offers a way to work with integers beyond the safe limit of Number.
const largeNumber = BigInt('123456789012345678901234567890');
console.log(largeNumber + 1n);Example: Working with BigInt
BigInt ensures precision in mathematical operations involving large numbers.
Final Thoughts
The State of JavaScript 2024 highlights a dynamic ecosystem driven by innovation and choice. While familiar tools like React and TypeScript maintain their dominance, rising stars like SolidJS and Vite showcase the community’s appetite for improvements in performance and developer experience. Comparing this year’s results to 2023 reveals a steady evolution rather than revolutionary change, indicating a maturing landscape.
For developers, these trends affirm the importance of staying informed and experimenting with emerging tools and features.
