This article is aimed for beginner developers and anyone interested in getting up and running with Node.js. Before diving into this article, you should be confident enough with JavaScript to know the basic concepts of the language. Technical terms regarding Node will be explained and linked below.

Node is an asynchronous event driven JavaScript runtime built upon Chrome’s V8 JavaScript engine. It’s designed to build scalable network applications.

That being the raw definition, let me clarify. Node.js enables you to write server side JavaScript. You may now be wondering, how? As you know, JavaScript is a language which runs in a browser. The browser’s engine takes JavaScript code and compiles it into commands. The creator of Node.js took Chrome’s engine and built a runtime for it to work on a server. Don’t get confused with the word runtime. It’s an environment where the language can get interpreted. So what do we have now? A way to write JavaScript on the back end.

Regarding the definition, you might be wondering what the term asynchronous even means in the current context. JavaScript is single threaded, meaning there is only one thread of execution. So you don’t want events to interrupt the main thread of execution. This is what asynchronous means, handling events without interrupting the main thread. Node is based on this non-blocking execution, making it one of the fastest tools for building web applications today. In the following “Hello World” example, many connections can be handled concurrently. Upon each connection the callback is fired, but if there is no work to be done Node will remain asleep.

The first step is to get yourself an instance of the JavaScript runtime up and running on your local machine. Just smash nodejs.org in your browsers address bar, or click the link above, and you should be good to go. The home screen should give you what you want right away. As I am running Ubuntu on my machine, the respective version of Node.js for my operating system is listed. Go ahead, download and install it. This will give you the tools needed to run a server on your local machine.

2. Open a command prompt and type:

mkdir myapp
cd myapp

These commands are universal for whatever OS you’ll be running. The former will create a new directory inside the directory you are currently in, mkdir = “make directory”. The latter will change into this newly created directory, cd = “change directory”. Hard-core windows users can calm down, this will work for you guys too, as it is equivalent to creating a new folder within your file system… only more fancy.

3. Initialize your project and link it to npm

Now the real fun starts. After creating your directory, very innovatively named myapp, you will need to initialize a project and link it to npm. Np-what? Okay, calm down. Npm is short for node package manager. This is where all node packages live. Packages can be viewed as bundles of code, like modules, which carry out a specific function. This functionality is what we as developers are utilizing. We use the application program interface, the API, provided for us by these modules. What is an API you ask?

This article is aimed for beginner developers and anyone interested in getting up and running with Node.js. Before diving into this article, you should be confident enough with JavaScript to know the basic concepts of the language. Technical terms regarding Node will be explained and linked below.

Node is an asynchronous event driven JavaScript runtime built upon Chrome’s V8 JavaScript engine. It’s designed to build scalable network applications.

That being the raw definition, let me clarify. Node.js enables you to write server side JavaScript. You may now be wondering, how? As you know, JavaScript is a language which runs in a browser. The browser’s engine takes JavaScript code and compiles it into commands. The creator of Node.js took Chrome’s engine and built a runtime for it to work on a server. Don’t get confused with the word runtime. It’s an environment where the language can get interpreted. So what do we have now? A way to write JavaScript on the back end.

Regarding the definition, you might be wondering what the term asynchronous even means in the current context. JavaScript is single threaded, meaning there is only one thread of execution. So you don’t want events to interrupt the main thread of execution. This is what asynchronous means, handling events without interrupting the main thread. Node is based on this non-blocking execution, making it one of the fastest tools for building web applications today. In the following “Hello World” example, many connections can be handled concurrently. Upon each connection the callback is fired, but if there is no work to be done Node will remain asleep.

The first step is to get yourself an instance of the JavaScript runtime up and running on your local machine. Just smash nodejs.org in your browsers address bar, or click the link above, and you should be good to go. The home screen should give you what you want right away. As I am running Ubuntu on my machine, the respective version of Node.js for my operating system is listed. Go ahead, download and install it. This will give you the tools needed to run a server on your local machine.

2. Open a command prompt and type:

mkdir myapp
cd myapp

These commands are universal for whatever OS you’ll be running. The former will create a new directory inside the directory you are currently in, mkdir = “make directory”. The latter will change into this newly created directory, cd = “change directory”. Hard-core windows users can calm down, this will work for you guys too, as it is equivalent to creating a new folder within your file system… only more fancy.

3. Initialize your project and link it to npm

Now the real fun starts. After creating your directory, very innovatively named myapp, you will need to initialize a project and link it to npm. Np-what? Okay, calm down. Npm is short for node package manager. This is where all node packages live. Packages can be viewed as bundles of code, like modules, which carry out a specific function. This functionality is what we as developers are utilizing. We use the application program interface, the API, provided for us by these modules. What is an API you ask?