Why scripts at the end of body tag

In my opinion, this is an outdated practice. More recently, the preference is for JavaScript to separate any code that requires the DOM to be present into a "DOMContentLoaded" event listener. This isn't necessarily all logic; lots of code can initialize without access to the complete DOM.

It's true that this causes a small moment when only the script file is being retrieved, and nothing else (for instance, images). This small window can be skipped by adding the async attribute, but even without it I recommend putting script tags in the head so that the browser knows as soon as possible to load them, rather than saving them (and any future JS-initiated requests) for last.


Scripts, historically, blocked additional resources from being downloaded more quickly. By placing them at the bottom, your style, content, and media could download more quickly giving the perception of improved performance.

Further reading: The async and defer attributes.