Node Js History

Node. Js

Node.js is a runtime environment for JavaScript that runs on the server. Node.js is an open source, cross-platform, and since its introduction in 2009, it got hugely popular and now plays a significant role in the web development scene. If GitHub stars are one popularity indication factor, having 46000+ stars means being very popular.

Node.js is built on top of the Google Chrome V8 JavaScript engine, and it’s mainly used to create web servers - but it’s not limited to that.

History of Node. Js

JavaScript is a programming language that was created at Netscape as a scripting tool to manipulate web pages inside their browser.This could create dynamic pages using server-side JavaScript. So the idea of server-side JavaScript was not introduced by Node.js, but it’s instead of old just like JavaScript - but at the time it was not successful.

One key factor that led to the rise of Node.js was timing. JavaScript since a few years was starting being considered a serious language, thanks for the “Web 2.0” applications that showed the world what a modern experience on the web could be like (think Google Maps or Gmail).

The JavaScript engines performance bar raised considerably thanks to the browser competition battle, which is still going strong. Development teams behind each major browser work hard every day to give us better performance, which is a huge win for JavaScript as a platform. V8, the engine that Node.js uses under the hood, is one of those and in particular it’s the Chrome JS engine.

But of course, Node.js is not popular just because of pure luck or timing. It introduced many innovative thinking on how to program in JavaScript on the server.