Simon Willison’s Weblog

In simple terms, what is node.js?

22nd January 2014

My answer to In simple terms, what is node.js? on Quora

It’s server-side programming, like PHP. The language you write the server-side code in is JavaScript (specifically the JavaScript version supported by Google’s V8 JavaScript engine, which was originally written for the Chrome web browser).

Posted 22nd January 2014 at 12:48 pm · Follow me on Mastodon, Bluesky, Twitter or subscribe to my newsletter

More recent articles

LLM 0.32a0 is a major backwards-compatible refactor - 29th April 2026
Tracking the history of the now-deceased OpenAI Microsoft AGI clause - 27th April 2026
DeepSeek V4 - almost on the frontier, a fraction of the price - 24th April 2026

This is In simple terms, what is node.js? by Simon Willison, posted on 22nd January 2014.

javascript 753 nodejs 68 programming-languages 42 web-development 169 quora 1005

Next: What's the best way to keep track of changes to a project you're not directly contributing to on github?

Previous: How much equity does YCombinator get on average?

Monthly briefing

Sponsor me for $10/month and get a curated email digest of the month's most important LLM developments.

Pay me to send you less!

Sponsor & subscribe