Node.js – The JavaScript Runtime

Node.js is an open-source, cross-platform JavaScript runtime environment that allows developers to execute JavaScript code outside of a browser. It is built on Chrome’s V8 JavaScript engine and is designed to be lightweight and efficient for building scalable network applications.

Key Features of Node.js

• Asynchronous and Event-Driven: Node.js uses an asynchronous, non-blocking I/O model, which allows for handling a large number of concurrent connections without slowing down the application.
• Single Threaded: Node.js operates on a single-threaded event loop, but can offload work to the operating system’s thread pool for handling tasks in the background.
• Modules: Node.js has a rich ecosystem of built-in modules, as well as third-party modules that can be easily integrated into your applications.
• Package Manager: npm (Node Package Manager) is the default package manager for Node.js, which allows developers to easily install and manage dependencies for their projects.

Getting Started with Node.js

To start using Node.js, you can download and install it from the official website (https://nodejs.org). Once installed, you can create a new Node.js project by running npm init in your terminal to generate a package.json file that includes information about your project and its dependencies.

You can then write your JavaScript code in a file with a .js extension, and run it using the Node.js command line tool by typing node filename.js. Node.js will execute your code and display the output in the terminal.

Overall, Node.js is a powerful runtime environment for building server-side applications with JavaScript. It’s a popular choice for building web servers, REST APIs, and real-time applications, and has a growing community of developers contributing to its development.