What is Node?

Many of the articles on the internet have a standard definition of the node as “It is a runtime environment which runs JavaScript programs outside the web browser”. Wikipedia says that “Node.js is an open-source, cross-platform, back-end, JavaScript runtime environment that executes JavaScript code outside a web browser“.

But what exactly it means?

Earlier even before the node came, the only way to execute and run Java script programs was inside the web browser. As the internet grows, web applications started growing and JavaScript started becoming popular due to the need for JQuery, Ajax and now it is been a standard (ECMAScript also called ES).

Node lets developers use JavaScript to write back-end systems. Though there are many frameworks through which back-end systems are written like Dot Net, Java spring boot, PHP Laravel, and Django.

BIG ALERT !! Node.js is not a framework. It's a runtime environment to run JavaScript programs outside the browser. This means you don’t need to write the “Hello world” program inside the browser’s console to print “Hello world”. You can write this in Node and execute it on your OS terminal as well with the same JavaScript syntax.

Node.js represents a “JavaScript everywhere” paradigm unifying web application development around a single programming language, rather than different languages for server-side and client-side scripts. This means, that you don’t need to implement client-side and server-side scripts in different languages. You can use JavaScript as a programming language to implement both the front end and back end. Is this even possible? Yes, that’s why we are reading this blog about Node.js.

You probably have heard about the terms MEAN / MERN stack. If you exclude “M” which stands for MongoDB, the other three “EAN” which stands for Express, Angular, Node, and “ERN” which stands for Express, React, and Node are all based on a single programming language called JavaScript. Though “A” stands for Angular which contains Typescript. But, Typescript is a superset of JavaScript and shares some common properties.

Interesting isn’t it? Just one programming language can be useful for implementing the complete web app.

Here, I am not promoting JavaScript but trying to tell how back-end systems can be developed with JavaScript, And the answer is using Node.

But how does Node manage to run JavaScript code outside the browser environment?

Node is a program that uses Google’s V8 JavaScript engine to run JavaScript programs. This means Google’s V8 Java script engine is embedded into Node.exe (Considering Windows OS). When we install a node into our system, a node process is created and within that process contains Google’s V8 engine. To know more about V8, visit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V8_(JavaScript_engine)

Enough theory !! Let’s now dive into the technicalities of Node starting with its basics.

In the upcoming article, we will be seeing how Node.js works internally by looking into its Event Driven Architecture and later we will keep on diving into its internals.

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