

Here’s a formal definition as given on the official Node.js website: Node.js® is a JavaScript runtime built on Chrome’s V8 JavaScript engine. Machine code is low-level code which the computer can run without needing to first interpret it. This engine takes your JavaScript code and converts it into a faster machine code. JavaScript now has the capability to do things that other scripting languages like Python can do.īoth your browser JavaScript and Node.js run on the V8 JavaScript runtime engine. Now you can do much more with JavaScript than just making websites interactive. Node.js came into existence when the original developers of JavaScript extended it from something you could only run in the browser to something you could run on your machine as a standalone application. If you know Java, here’s a little analogy. The Node.js run-time environment includes everything you need to execute a program written in JavaScript. Sounds great, but what does that mean? How does that work? Node.js is a JavaScript runtime environment.
