9. Intro to Node.js

Over the past year or so, a platform written by Joyent1 has been taking the web development world by storm. This platform is called Node.js,2 commonly referred to as Node (and will be from here on).

Tip

If you don’t believe that Node is taking the web development world by storm, just ask companies like LinkedIn,3 who announced in 2011 that it had rewritten its API from Ruby on Rails4 to Node. That’s a pretty big endorsement.

So what is Node exactly, and why are we talking about it in a CoffeeScript book? In this chapter, you’ll find out.

What Is Node.js?

Node is an implementation of server-side JavaScript that sits atop Google’s V85 JavaScript engine. Node is part framework, runtime, and language. Because of that, people ...

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