I've been thinking about this question for a while and can't seem to find the answer. What is the relationship between Node.js and V8? and Can Node.js work without V8?
What is the relationship between Node.js and V8?
V8 is the Javascript engine inside of node.js that parses and runs your Javascript. The same V8 engine is used inside of Chrome to run javascript in the Chrome browser. Google open-sourced the V8 engine and the builders of node.js used it to run Javascript in node.js.
Can Node.js work without V8?
No. The current node.js binary cannot work without V8. It would have no Javascript engine and thus no ability to run code which would obviously render it non-functional. Node.js was not designed to run with any other Javascript engine and, in fact, all the native code bindings that come with node.js (such as the fs module or the net module) all rely on the specific V8 interface between C++ and Javascript.
There is an effort by Microsoft to allow the Chakra Javascript engine (that's the engine in Edge) to be used with node.js. They build a V8 shim on top of Chakra so that the node.js binary code that expects to be talking to V8 can continue to do what it was doing, but actually end up talking to the Chakra engine underneath. From what I've read this is particularly targeted at Microsoft platforms that already have the Chakra engine and do not have the V8 engine running on them, though presumably you could use it on Windows too.
Node.js can actually function to some extent without V8, through use of the node-chakracore project. There is ongoing work to reduce the tight coupling between V8 and Node, so that different JavaScript engines can be used in-place.
Many beginners think that nodejs is a programming language but it is not. Before getting into the relation between v8 and nodejs lets see what V8 actually is.
V8
V8 is a javascript engine. A javascript engine is used to interpret javascript code to machine code. There are different javascript engines ex: V8 for chrome, Chakra for IE, Spider monkey for Netscape etc.
nodejs and V8
V8 is a browser engine whereas nodejs is built on top of V8 which is a runtime environment that gives javascript the power to run at the server-side.
Can Node.js work without V8?
Yes, but I have never used nodejs with other javascript engines.
Related
Recently I was create react app using vite , it is lightweight , less config and fast then compare with webpack . now my question is , is it required bable configuration in Vite project
No, vite does automatic syntax transforms but it only targets browsers that support es modules (firefox & chrome started supporting it around 2018). If you want to support new js features in older browsers you need to add polyfills though. You can read about the exact behavior and how to support even older browsers here.
I think that question need more information about that topic.
Vite.js uses the built-in JavaScript support of the browser, so you don't need to explicitly configure the JavaScript version in Vite.js itself.
When I said Vite.js uses the built-in JavaScript support of the browser, I meant that Vite.js relies on the JavaScript engine of the browser to interpret and run the JavaScript code in your application. The JavaScript engine is the component of the browser that executes JavaScript code. When you visit a web page that contains JavaScript, the browser runs the JavaScript code using its built-in JavaScript engine. This means that the version of JavaScript that is supported by your application is determined by the version of the JavaScript engine that is built into the browser. In the case of Vite.js, the JavaScript code in your application is not transpiled or otherwise modified before being run by the browser. However, if your application uses modern JavaScript syntax that is not supported by the target browsers, you will need to transpile the code to an older version of the language that is supported. In that case, you can use Babel.
No, it is already setup on the background. However if you'd like to adjust Babel's config you can do it. Read the docs here: https://github.com/vitejs/vite-plugin-react/blob/main/packages/plugin-react/README.md
I was learning babel and webpack and then it turns out I need to install node.js to run them both and I asked myself WHY? Then according to my research, we need node.js for webpack and babel since both of them were written in JS and to run that JS code which transpiles( for babel) and bundles up the code(for webpack). Also, another reason is that since both babel and webpack handles our JS code outside of the browser, this is the reason to use Node.js. Are these reasons true?
According to the Node.js website -
Node.js® is a JavaScript runtime built on Chrome's V8 JavaScript engine.
Webpack and babel (along with many other tools you might use for frontend development) are written in javascript and since they are command line tools, they need a way to run outside of the browser (directly on your machine).
They could have used some other language to write the tools but since they chose to write them in javascript, Node.js is the only feasible options right now.
In case you are interested, the original creator of nodejs
Ryan Dahl has built another secure runtime environment for Javascript/Typescript called Deno
Yes, at the moment the node.js project is non-portable by full open source disclosure nor extension to port node.js commonjs without a just in time transpiler with a service worker on a server.
Definitions: FHC = "from half court"
Babel and webpack
(1) transpile/move (write&read, not ln -s sym...bolic link) & (2) compost/pile onto a JIT target,
like v8 or other browser-javascript-interpreters. v8 on a service worker can compile on the edge just in time for interpretation in a browser v8 environment but still on the cloudflare edge server.
Declare (FHC) Allegedly, rust provides webassembly modules with the lipid [llvm-]wrappings
that nucleic acid exocytosis needs to be a full-blown virus, err I mean
Initiation Routine needs to be a targetable JIT extension!
A compiler/transpiler still requires it's target-scope receivable. Declare (FHC) Emit is to execute as compile is to interpret, even AST.
first, the "facts" that I know:
reactJS is frontend framework, after compiling it'll generate a bundle of html/js/css files that can be recognized by modern browsers, so the browser straightforward request the web host server for these static html files ;
nodeJS is a server-side environment, or sometimes people call it a backend framework, browsers don't understand nodeJS but have to request the web host server to interpret it and to send back the html response.
according to wiki, npm is a package manager for the JavaScript programming language. It is the default package manager for the JavaScript runtime environment Node.js.
my question is:
is my understanding correct
why reactJS also using npm and includes node_module, does it have something to do with nodeJS
Javascript is the programming language used in both Node.js and in the browser, but that's about as far as the similarities goes. Node uses the V8 engine, which is the same running in the chrome browser.
Even though they use the same engine, they are quite different. They both have plenty of APIs - most notably, the browser has the DOM (which allows you to render stuff to the screen). In Node.js you do not have the DOM, but there are other APIs, for accessing the filesystem for instance.
Since both are running JavaScript, you can try to run the same program both in node and in the browser, but it will sometimes fail. React is a front-end framework which uses the DOM, so if you try to run React in node, it will crash because in Node there is no DOM (Node has no screen to render to). If you try to run a program suited for Node.js in the browser, it will crash if it uses some Node-specific API.
The confusing bit is that npm is a package manager for JavaScript, not necessarily node (even though node is in the name..). Therefore, we can use npm also for web applications. (If we do, we need to use a bundler like webpack though).
Some npm modules might work both in the browser and in node, but some will only work on one of them. If the npm module requires some platform-spcific API (DOM for the browser for example) then it will not work for the other platform.
Hope that clears things out! I understand that it's a bit of a mess..
I'm new to the front end development and modern technologies MEAN/MERN stack, I am confuse about difference between node.js and express can someone outline differences or advantages
and one can learn express.js directly or it's a pre requisite to learn node.js first?
Node.js is a JavaScript runtime built on Chrome’s V8 JavaScript engine. It is used to run JavaScript in ways similar to how the browser runs JavaScript but on servers. Express is a library (called a package in the Node.js ecosystem) that makes it really easy to build APIs or serve files.
Node.js is a platform for creating server-side event-driven I/o application using javascript.
Express.js is a framework based on node.js for developing web-application using principles and methods of node.js.
In simpler terms, express.js makes handling API requests and server management easier than using only node.js
Express js is built on top of the Node.js framework.
Express js uses node.js itself and provides more features to build applications on top Node.js
Node.js: Node.js is a Javascript runtime environment for executing Javascript code outside of a browser.
Express.js: Express.js is fast and light-weigh framework for building web applications.
You should first learn Node.js and it's core modules like path, fs, os, events and others.
After that you should learn asynchronous Node.js like callback, Promises and async/await.
Then you should learn express framework.
I'm looking for a javascript library that attempts to provide the same simple utilities in both the browser environment AND nodejs (iteration, mapping, maybe control-flow) so that code can more easily be re-used across server and client. I know you can hack out parts of any JS library (YUI, jQuery, ...) and get them to work in both environments, I'm just wondering if it's already been done or standardized.
The closest I've seen is this: https://github.com/kof/sharedjs
But it's incomplete and has some odd stuff. I'm wondering if there is something more polished before I fork and hack.
The underscore library was built to add more functional programming to jquery, things like mapping, and also templating.
Because it doesn't rely on the DOM (it leaves that to jquery) it functions well in node.
The RightJS link library has a server build link that has node.js in mind.
From the download page:
RightJS is also available as a server-side library. In this case it contains only the native JavaScript unit extensions and the Class, Observer, Options units along with all the non-DOM utility functions from the Util module.
Our server-side build follows the CommonJS principles and is ready for use with the node.js framework.
Node's GitHub wiki has a list of CommonJS-compatible modules which will run in Node and browsers.
Some of the other modules on that page may also run in a browser environment. For example, the excellent DateJS works fine in Node. (It is available as a NPM.)
Btw, RightJS is also available on NPM