Node.js VS JavaScript: Differences & Similarities

Do you know that along with CSS and HTML, JavaScript is one of the 3 main things of the World Wide Web? It facilitates interactivity to the web app pages, therefore, it is extremely crucial for web applications. A majority of web applications use this tool and all the major web browsers have a dedicated JavaScript engine to execute this.

JavaScript is a popular language which runs inside website browsers as part of documents loaded by that browser. It gives behaviour to the web pages (CSS gives form or look & feel and HTML gives semantic structure). We can say that JS helps in providing advanced web development solutions. However, nothing should restrict JS to run solely inside any web browser.

Now being an interpreted programming language, it needs a good interpreter to run V8 is the Google Chrome JS engine. 'Node' can be a front-end for it that can be used to run different scripts of JavaScript outside the web browser.

The Node or Node.js usually represents a collection of methods and objects available to the JavaScript code when run in V8 or through the node interpreter. This is a JS library cum runtime. Furthermore, if you know about Java then Java is to JRE is to JVM in the same way JavaScript is to Node is to V8.

Before going in-depth into this topic, let’s have some quick facts about Node.js:

There are approximately 127,702 web apps made using Node.js till date out of which 82,661 are unique domains.

Some important websites that are using Node.js are Twitter, ampproject.org, mobile.twitter.com, aliexpress, sohu, etc.

In this blog, we are trying to compare both of these tools on various parameters. I hope you like this unique comparison. So let’s start:

JavaScript vs Node.js: Type

Javascript is a popular programming language and it runs in any web browser with a good web browser.

On the other hand, Node.js is an interpreter and environment for the JavaScript with some specific useful libraries which JS programming can be used separately.

JavaScript vs Node.js: Utility

Javascript is mainly used for any client side activity for the web application, for example refreshing the page in a specific interval, possible attribute validation or provide any dynamic changes in web app pages without refreshing that particular web page.

It is commonly used by some of the best IT companies providing software solutions for performing or accessing any non-blocking operation of operating system, like executing or creating a shell script or accessing the hardware specific information or running any job in the backend.

JavaScript vs Node.js: Running Engine

JavaScript running any engine like JavaScript Core (Safari), Spider monkey (FireFox), V8 (Google Chrome)

Node.js only runs in a V8 engine that is mainly used by Google Chrome. And, JS program which will be written with the help of Node.js library will always run in the V8 Engine.

Some additional information that gives you clear idea about difference between Node.js and JavaScript

I will try to differentiate between these two popular technologies with the help of some additional below mentioned points:

1. JavaScript is mainly used for the client-side activity for one particular web application. Some of these activities can be dynamic page display in some schedule time interval, addressing business validation or basic Ajax call kind of task.

These are used most of the time for any web apps. On the other hand, Node.js is mainly used for running or accessing any operating system for the non-blocking operation.

An operation like executing or creating a shell script, or getting any specific information related to the hardware on one call or the installed details of certificate in the system or various defined task which are most of the time non-blocking on an operating system.

2. JavaScript programming is very easy to write (although, it is subjective as some developers find it difficult too) and put the running environment means right browser.

On the other hand, Nodejs only support the V8 engine that is specific to the googles chrome. But whether it support V8 engine, written in the JavaScript code can be able to run in any given environment. Therefore, there is no constraint to it specific to the browser.

3. JavaScript normally follows standard of Java Programming language. There may have different ways of writing source code but at the same time, we can say that it is following the standards of Java Programming language.

On the other hand, Node.js is written in the C++, and provides V8 engine base that helps developers to run the written program of javascript in any browser environment.

4. For accessing the operating system specific to any non-blocking task JavaScript has many objects but these are operating system specific. For example, an ActiveX Control which is only running in the Windows. On the other hand, Node.js is given utility to run a few operating systems.

Also, it does not have any specific constraint related to operating system. Node.js is quite familiar to build a specific binding using the file system, and also allowing the web app developer for reading or sometimes write on the disk.

Let’s Wrap Up:

So, in this blog I tried to differentiate between Node.js and Javascript in the best possible way. Node.js makes the Javascript more powerful and add many great features to it. If you are thinking of web app development, then you should definitely think of Nodejs and javascript.

If you have any such requirement then you can contact Xicom Technologies which provides such kinds of web development services.

I am working in this company for the past 8 years as a Sr. Software Engineer. We have developed several mobile and web development solutions as per the customers' requirements. We first analyse and evaluate each project and then decide which technology is best to use to develop that project.

If you hire us to do such a project for your organisation then definitely you will get competitive advantage in the market and your business will grow at a tremendous pace.