Since I started coding every day I’ve been making brilliant progress, but I think sometimes I could definitely benefit from slowing down and going over what I’ve done to make sure I understand it a bit better. I’ve been introduced to a bunch of new technologies, and despite being able to rattle off names, I didn’t feel like I understood them well enough, so I thought I’d do a short post to break them down.

Node.js® is a JavaScript runtime built on Chrome’s V8 JavaScript engine. Node.js uses an event-driven, non-blocking I/O model that makes it lightweight and efficient. Node.js’ package ecosystem, npm, is the largest ecosystem of open source libraries in the world.

-nodejs.org

Node.js is a runtime environment which allows us to run JavaScript without the browser. Each browser (that supports JS) has a JavaScript engine which renders JS- which is why JS may act slightly differently in each browser- just like the way that CSS renders differently in each browser.

Saying Node is a runtime environment doesn’t help me much in and of itself (no CS degree here!) but I did some reading about it, and watched some videos, and feel like I have a better understanding now. Node.js isn’t written in JavaScript, it’s written in c++, but it allows us to use JavaScript (an easier language, and one which couldn’t be used this way before) to interact with the server, so in a colloquial way, I like to think of it as an interpreter, or scaffolding, which acts as a coupler allowing us to fit together two otherwise incompatible technologies. I only mean in colloquial terms- I don’t mean any of those in their Computer Science senses- I’ve seen some of the online ‘discussions’! I’d very much like to ask a Node developer to ‘explain it to me like I’m five’- I’d be really interested to hear what they say.

There are some good videos explaining Node.js: this video from LearnCode.academy, this video from Ethan Garofolo, and in particular, I liked this video from Traversy Media. I look forward to the day I can confidently explain Node.js to newbies, and I feel like I’m getting there- I just have to be comfortable with the fact that it’s going to be one of those abstract wibbly-wobbly things for a little while!