Preface

When Node.js arrived in 2009, we knew something was different. JavaScript on the server wasn’t anything new. In fact, server-side JavaScript has existed almost as long as client-side JavaScript. With Node, the speed of the JavaScript runtimes, coupled with the event-based parallelism that many JavaScript programmers were already familiar with, were indeed compelling. And not just for client-side JavaScript developers, which was our background—Node attracted developers from the systems level to various server-side backgrounds, PHP to Ruby to Java. We all found ourselves inside this movement.

At that time, Node was changing a lot, but we stuck with it and learned a whole lot in the process. From the start, Node focused on making a small, low-level core library that would provide enough functionality for a large, diverse user space to grow. Thankfully, this large and diverse user space exists today because of these design decisions early on. Node is a lot more stable now and used in production for numerous startups as well as established enterprises.