Difference between Node.js and JavaScript

Before we start with JavaScript vs Node JS, let’s understand what is JavaScript and Node JS. In general terms, they can be termed programming languages. These popular languages help the applications to maintain network connection and performance. In this article, we have discussed one of the most compared topics‑ the differences between JavaScript and Node JS.

What is JavaScript?

JavaScript is a lightweight, object‑oriented scripting language, used to build dynamic HTML pages with interactive effects on web pages. The code can only be executed and run in a web browser, as it is an interpreted scripting language. It is commonly used for game and mobile application development.

It was originally known as LiveScript which was later renamed and has an extension of .js. Programming Language C has highly influenced JavaScript’s syntax.

What is Node JS?

Node JS is cross‑platform, which comes with a large number of modules and is used in web creation. It can also be used to create a variety of applications like web apps, chat apps, command‑line apps, etc. With a filename extension of .js, Node JS is used majorly in building network programs.

Node.js enables JavaScript code to run outside the browser. It provides a cross‑platform runtime environment with event‑driven, non‑blocking I/O for creating highly scalable server‑side JavaScript applications.

JavaScript is a language, while Node.JS isn’t. It’s just an environment that runs JavaScript. Node JS is a V8 engine bundled with some libraries to do networking so that JavaScript can be used outside the browser.

Now that we have understood briefly about Node JS and JavaScript, let’s understand how they are different from each other.

JavaScript is a widely‑used programming language used by all web application developers. Node JS is a JavaScript library extension, which includes certain undefined utilities, often critical for meeting objectives. All browsers have JavaScript engines that run the JavaScript of web pages. All JavaScript is not important to the node community, but all node projects represent the JavaScript community.