Simplified JavaScript Jargon (short SJSJ) is a community-driven attempt at explaining the loads of buzzwords making the current JavaScript ecosystem in a few simple words. The idea is not to replace individual documentations, but to act as some kind of glossary that can be easily referrenced.

If you are willing to contribute, open a pull request to complete, update or fill in a section. Thank you for doing so!

AngularJS section to be completed.

Babel section to be completed.

Backbone.js section to be completed.

Bower is a package manager for front-end dependencies. It takes care of hunting, finding, downloading, saving these dependencies and keeping track of them in a manifest file called bower.json. Bower uses a flat dependency tree, requiring only one version for each package, reducing page load to a minimum.

Broccoli section to be completed.

Browserify section to be completed.

Brunch section to be completed.

CoffeeScript is a little language that compiles into JavaScript. It is an attempt to expose the good parts of JavaScript in a simple way and friendly syntax, the golden rule being: “It’s just JavaScript”.

The code compiles one-to-one into the equivalent JS, and there is no interpretation at runtime. The compiled output is readable and pretty-printed, will work in every JavaScript runtime, and tends to run as fast or faster than the equivalent handwritten JavaScript.

ECMAScript (shortened as ES) is the standardized specification of the scripting language used by JavaScript, as well as less known languages JScript and ActionScript.

The versioning convention of ECMAScript has been the subject of hot debates. We often refer to ES5 (understood by most browsers), ES6 (the future of JavaScript) and even ES7 (the far future of JavaScript), but the official appelation for ES6 would actually be ES2015. The intention is to publish a version of the specification a year, making the language evolve quicker than ever. Still, most developers use ES5 and ES6 terms.

Ember section to be completed.

Express section to be completed.

Grunt section to be completed.

Gulp section to be completed.

io.js section to be completed.

jQuery is a fast, small, and feature-rich JavaScript library. It makes things like HTML document traversal and manipulation, event handling, animation, and Ajax much simpler with an easy-to-use API that works across a multitude of browsers. With a combination of versatility and extensibility, jQuery has changed the way that millions of people write JavaScript.

Knockout section to be completed.

Meteor section to be completed.

MooTools section to be completed.

Node.js is an open-source, cross-platform runtime environment for developing server-side web applications built on Chrome’s V8 JavaScript engine. These applications are written in JavaScript and can be run within the Node.js runtime.

Node.js uses an event-driven, non-blocking I/O (input/output) model that makes it lightweight and efficient as well as optimized for real-time web applications’ throughput and scalability.

Its work is hosted and supported by the Node.js Foundation, a collaborative project at Linux Foundation.

npm section to be completed.

nvm section to be completed.

PhoneGap section to be completed.

React section to be completed.

RequireJS section to be completed.

TypeScript section to be completed.

Yeoman is both a generator builder and an ecosystem. A generator is basically a plugin that can be run with the yo command to scaffold complete projects or useful parts.

Therefore, the goal of a Yeoman generator is usually (but not necessarily) to speed up the setup and installation process of a project or part of a project by packaging it inside a module that can be configured through a question/reply workflow from the command line.

V8 section to be completed.

Webpack section to be completed.