Is Node.js a framework or a language?
Neither. Node.js is a runtime, an environment that runs JavaScript. Express is a framework. JavaScript is the language. Node.js is the runtime that lets JavaScript run on the server.
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More FAQs in What Is Node.js Explained: A Beginner's Guide to Backend JavaScript
Node.js is a JavaScript runtime that lets you run JavaScript outside the browser, on the server. Before Node.js, JavaScript only ran in browsers. It is built on Chrome's V8 engine and uses libuv for async I/O.
Same language on frontend and backend, huge npm ecosystem, excellent for real-time apps and APIs, and strong community support. These made Node.js dominant for modern web backends.
V8 is Google's JavaScript engine, used in Chrome. Node.js uses V8 to compile JavaScript to machine code on the server. This is why Node.js can run JavaScript outside the browser.
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