What makes JavaScript great

JavaScript is the most egalitarian of languages. It is the common tongue of the Internet, with the lowest bar to entry. Just hit F12 in the browser, and there you go—you’re programming in JavaScript!

Despite (or maybe because of) its ease of use, JavaScript also has one of the most sprawling and complex ecosystems in the world of programming. After nearly 30 years of intensive refinement, the JavaScript language continues to see regular and significant improvements. As developers, we have a front-row seat to the evolution of the language in every ECMAScript specification release, not to mention the continuous stream of innovation in front-end JavaScript frameworks.

A less fortunate outcome of JavaScript’s universality is the recent spate of npm attacks, which were reported on InfoWorld last week.

Read on for these stories and more, in this month’s report.

Top picks for JavaScript readers on InfoWorld

Hands-on with Solid: Reactive programming with signalsSolid is one of the most influential front-end frameworks in the JavaScript universe, especially for its use of signals for state and reactivity. Solid is also celebrated for its developer experience (DX), with a clean design that can handle any requirement, from small projects to the enterprise. Add to that its reputation for excellent performance, and it is not hard to see why Solid is such a popular choice.

Hands-on with Svelte: Build-time compilation in a reactive frameworkSvelte pioneered the compile-time optimization that has since become common among front-end JavaScript frameworks. This approach yields great performance because minimal code is sent across the wire, and the framework isn’t interpreted on the browser. All that is run is the JavaScript code. Svelte’s syntax is also super minimal, yet at times beautifully expressive.

ECMAScript 2025: The best new features in JavaScriptThe attention grabber in this summer 2025 release is the new built-in Iterator object and its functional operators. Other updates include new Set methods, a new JSON module import, improvements to regular expressions, a Promise.try method for streamlining promise chains, and a new Float16Array typed array.

Video: How to build native desktop apps vs. web UI apps When does it make sense to build a desktop app with native or semi-native UI components, versus going the web-UI route with a toolkit like Electron? This video demonstrates both approaches with pros and cons of each. (Also see the accompanying article: Native UI vs. web UI: How to choose.)

JavaScript news bites

Wave of npm supply chain attacks exposes thousands of enterprise developer credentials

Zoneless Angular arrives in Angular 20.2

TypeScript 5.9 arrives with deferred module evaluation, expandable hovers

Bun v1.2.21 released

Fresh 2.0 graduates to beta, adds Vite support

More good reads and JavaScript updates elsewhere

Angular summer update 2025The Angular team shares a collection of updates to the framework in its dot release. Items include Zoneless APIs being production-ready, an (experimental) MCP server for LLM integration, and DevTool improvements, including Signal and router visualization. The section on AI is particularly interesting as it shows the framework’s extensive efforts to strengthen machine learning tie-ins that may be indicative of the future for the industry as a whole.

Next.js 15.5The official Vercel announcement for NextJS 15.5. This release includes a --turobpack flag for the Next build command. Turbopack is a newer build tool, also made by Vercel. Turbopack is Rust-based and intended to improve build-times (this is currently a beta feature). Next’s support for Node middleware is also now stable. Other changes include Typescript enhancements and the deprecation of the next lint command–use ESlint instead (incidentally ESLint now has multithreading via worker threads).

JavaScript’s trademark problemAn interesting description of the state of the JavaScript trademark, which has remained under Oracle’s control since the tech giant purchased Sun Microsystems back in 2010. This gives you a lot of the background story and an update on the present lawsuit, spearheaded by Deno, to bring the JavaScript name and trademark into the public domain. It also tells the (rather lovely) origin tale for the now-famous JS Logo.