JavaScript and Open Data

Introduction

I.1. Motivation

Two main facts constituted the motivation for writing this book:

• – Broad interest in the JavaScript language: the most used on Earth. It is run hundreds of millions times every day¹: what web page does not use it?

Figure I.1. Programmers’ contributions to the most commonly used computer languages

This use ensures regular maintenance of the code and has led to permanent improvement in performance for more than 25 years. In recent years, several innovations of the JavaScript norm have convinced all browser providers to adopt them. Figure I.1., published October 2017, counts the contributions of internautsʼ coding development in several computer languages.

• – Free access to big volumes of data on the Web:

Besides “proprietary” restricted data, public open data (e.g. United Nations, INSEE, US Census Bureau, etc.) [ICS 16] and free access data, via private providers (e.g. shared Google drive) or non-profits (Wikipedia), are an enormous reservoir of universal information.

These two facts have led us to write this book as a JavaScript programming manual, an open data oriented manual, with insight on combining web data and displaying them. Since 2015, the large adoption of recent JavaScript norms encourages their use and greatly facilitates new coding practices, as described in this manual.

Data represent the common heritage of humanity; everyone should ...