What JavaScript Trends Dominated 2018? Insights from the State of JS Survey

State of JS released its 2018 JavaScript survey, gathering responses from over 20,000 developers to reveal which languages, frameworks, and tools are most used, liked, and desired for learning.

1. JavaScript “Dialects”

As JavaScript matures, many “dialects” have emerged, such as ES6, TypeScript, Flow, Reason, Elm, ClojureScript, and CoffeeScript. CoffeeScript, once dominant, has been overtaken by ES6, TypeScript, and Flow. State of JS sees these dialects as the future of JavaScript, especially with projects like WebAssembly that may soon make raw JavaScript code feel outdated.

The 2018 winners are ES6 and TypeScript, while Reason also draws attention thanks to Facebook’s backing and high satisfaction scores.

2. Front‑end Frameworks

React and Vue lead the market, while Angular shows signs of decline. Two years ago, 27 % of respondents had never heard of Vue; today that figure has dropped to 1.3 %. React still holds the larger share, but Vue’s rapid rise continues.

3. Data Layer

Redux remains the most widely used state‑management tool, with an 82 % satisfaction rate, indicating its maturity. GraphQL is gaining traction, growing from 5 % to 20 % usage over two years.

4. Backend (Server‑side) Frameworks

JavaScript’s server‑side ecosystem has seen few breakthroughs. Many frameworks appear each year, but few challenge Express’s dominance. Even Koa, often touted as Express’s successor, shows lower satisfaction and declining usage.

Next.js stands out as an interesting participant, focusing on server‑side rendering for React applications rather than providing a full‑featured Node backend.

5. Testing

Mocha remains the most popular unit‑testing framework, benefiting from a long history and a large ecosystem. Jest follows closely in usage and enjoys slightly higher satisfaction (96 % vs. 82 %), making it the second‑most satisfying tool after ES6.

6. Mobile and Desktop

React Native and Electron are the primary solutions for building mobile and desktop apps with web technologies, showing similar satisfaction and usage numbers. Google contributes with the new Headful Node framework Carlo and the widely followed Flutter.

Developers seeking a non‑React approach can consider Weex, which enables cross‑platform development within the Vue.js ecosystem.

For the full report, see “The State of JavaScript 2018”.