Book Image

Learning Node.js for .NET Developers

Book Image

Learning Node.js for .NET Developers

Overview of this book

Node.js is an open source, cross-platform runtime environment that allows you to use JavaScript to develop server-side web applications. This short guide will help you develop applications using JavaScript and Node.js, leverage your existing programming skills from .NET or Java, and make the most of these other platforms through understanding the Node.js programming model. You will learn how to build web applications and APIs in Node, discover packages in the Node.js ecosystem, test and deploy your Node.js code, and more. Finally, you will discover how to integrate Node.js and .NET code.
Table of Contents (21 chapters)
Learning Node.js for .NET Developers
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Going beyond JavaScript


If you want to target browsers or Node.js, JavaScript is the only language natively supported by these environments. This is different to VM-based environments like the .NET runtime and the JVM, which support multiple languages.

The .NET runtime supports C#, F#, VB.NET, and others. The JVM supports Java, Scala, Clojure, and others. These languages work by compiling down to an assembly language for the environment's VM. This is the Common Intermediate Language in .NET or Java bytecode in the case of the JVM.

There is a reason why programmers don't all write CIL or Java bytecode though. These are low-level machine languages and much less human-friendly than C#, Java, and so on. In general, higher-level languages can support better productivity, as well as safety (for example, through type systems and memory management).

There is also a reason why .NET programmers don't always use C# and JVM programmers don't always use Java. A range of languages can serve different use...