📖 Notes LESSON 24 OF 32

Node.js Intro

⏱️ 26 min

🟢 Node.js

JavaScript, Now on the Server

Node.js runs JavaScript outside the browser using Chrome's V8 engine, letting you write the backend in the same language as your frontend.

Backend Fundamentals

What Node.js Actually Is

⚙️

V8 Engine

The same JS engine that powers Chrome, embedded to run JS outside the browser.

🔁

Event Loop

Node is single-threaded but non-blocking — I/O operations run in the background and callbacks fire when they finish.

📦

npm

Node's package manager — installs and manages third-party libraries like Express.

🌐

http module

Node's built-in module for creating a raw web server, no framework required.

A Raw HTTP Server

const http = require('http');

const server = http.createServer((req, res) => {
  res.writeHead(200, { 'Content-Type': 'text/plain' });
  res.end('Hello from Node!');
});

server.listen(3000, () => {
  console.log('Server running on port 3000');
});

💡

Why the next lesson uses Express instead

Writing routing, JSON parsing, and error handling manually with the raw http module gets repetitive fast — Express (Lesson 25) wraps this exact same server pattern in a much simpler API.

← Lesson 23: Project 4: Course Platform Lesson 25: Express REST API →