num_pages: 25
description: Node.js. Its the latest in a long line of Are you cool enough to use me? programming languages APIs and toolkits. In that sense it lands squarely in the tradition of Railsand Ajax and Hadoop and even to some degree iPhone programming and HTML5.Dig a little deeper and youll hear that Node.js (or as its more briefly called by manysimply Node) is a server-side solution for JavaScript and in particular for receiving and responding to HTTP requests. If that doesnt completely boggle your mind by the time the conversation heats up with discussion of ports sockets and threads youll tend to glaze over. Is this really JavaScript? In fact why in the world would anyone want to run JavaScript outside of a browser let alone the server?The good news is that youre hearing (and thinking) about the right things. Node really is concerned with network programming and server-side request/response processing.The bad news is that like Rails Ajax and Hadoop before it theres precious little clear information available. There will be in time  as there now is for these other coolframeworks that have matured  but why wait for a book or tutorial when you might be able to use Node today and dramatically improve the maintainability.
language: English
title: What Is Node?
publisher: O'Reilly Media