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node.js what is it ?

by MagicMarket
6 replies
Everbody is talking about this node.js, can somebody explain to me what it is and where to start ? I am new to javascript.
Thank you.

- MM
#nodejs
  • Profile picture of the author Mike Anthony
    In simple terms Node is server side framework implementation of Javascript. JS used to be used chiefly in the browser (called the front end side) but through node and other frameworks (meteor is another up and coming one) it is now being used on the server as well. So you now can write entire applications, database access logic and everything with just JS on the front side (browser) and on the back end (server) not using any other language

    dig in and go all in with learning Javascript. For the web just about every developer has to deal with Javascript whether they are using PHP, ruby , Python or C# so becoming fluent in Javascript is a no brainer.
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  • Profile picture of the author RickFlair
    Web development has two major aspects: front-end (what's on your browser) and back-end (how it is functioning). The front end involves languages such as HTML, CSS and JavaScript while PHP, Python, Ruby are the heavy hitters for server side programming.

    Node.js is a JavaScript based development framework (for the server). Here is an excellent resource for Node.js and PHP comparison.
    Node.js Vs PHP | Performance Comparison - Node js or PHP

    Based on the concept of 'JavaScript Everywhere', it allows developers to code for server side operations or develop web based applications with JavaScript alone. That is, if you can ace JavaScript, you don't need to learn PHP or Python to develop for the back end for your website. It runs on servers using Google's V8, which gives it enough juice to thoroughly outperform languages like PHP.
    Thanks to its event-driven nature, Node.js based applications are extremely fast, but that does come at a price. If used with databases like MySQL, the performance will take a dip. MongoDB is a better match for Node.js since it is also event-driven.
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  • Profile picture of the author zdb
    Node is a javascript runtime environment. Put simply, it is a way to run JavaScript outside the browser. The purpose of this code (server, application, script) is up to the developer.

    With that said, the main focus of development tends to be on web applications. Most tend to use the web framework Express. You can, however, develop GUI applications. There are several frameworks for this purpose such as: Electron, NW.js, and Brackets.
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  • Profile picture of the author 3wCorner
    From Wikipedia:
    In software development, Node.js is an open-source, cross-platform runtime environment for developing server-side Web applications.
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  • Profile picture of the author Jamesvictor
    Node.js is not a JavaScript framework, many of its basic modules are written in JavaScript, and developers can write new modules in JavaScript.
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  • Profile picture of the author roboscripts
    Or very useful when you are developing bots that are crawling a site where they need to set a cookie set by Javascript. You save the cookie code into a file, parse it with nodeJS and then use the returned code to set up your cookie...
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