An Ode to Node.js

Before I came to Hack Reactor, I had a few misconceptions about Node. I had built it up to be some sort of idea that Node was some magical piece of software. That it was built to complement all the JavaScript that we’d write, but was somehow some completely foreign software. That it had nothing to do with JavaScript at all, other than the name.

As it turns out, Node is just a JavaScript interpreter. It reads code and executes it. It’s a means to take JavaScript beyond the browser window, to let JS function on the desktop. Once I got to understand what Node was, I began to see that it’s more like this:

Node is the blank canvas that will hold all of my code. I can place whatever JS lego blocks on it, to do pretty much anything I want.

var functionality = require(‘someLibrary’);

It will let me add functionality that others have written so I don’t need to reinvent the wheel, and then it’ll let me handle the rest. I can use require to bring in additional libraries, or link it to other canvases I’ve created. It’s just an amazing idea, simple in it’s execution, but as powerful as I could ever possibly need it to be. I can write all the server-side code in JavaScript, the language that I’m currently most comfortable in.

Beyond that, through the use of wrappers like Electron, I can even make Desktop apps with JS and Node. I still marvel at what’s possible. While I still think that I’ll want to learn Swift to make more native iOS apps, a platform-agnostic approach such as this becomes more and more appealing the more I learn. And who know for just how long people will use iPhones. The next big thing is always around the corner.

Hopefully, once I’ve completed HR, and have spent a few years working as a developer for someone else, I’ll have a great idea of my own. And it’s good to know that once that happens, there’s mediums such as Node that will let me be as expressive as I want. Thank you for being nothing more than you are Node.