Re:Node 11.0
by coldtea on Wednesday October 24, 2018 @05:54AM
(#18290991)
>From my naive understanding, I can download all dependencies as source files and place them in static or go through a CDN, no? Is the sole purpose of npm downloading the various libraries?
The purpose of npm is indeed downloading the various libraries, but not just for client development (to write JS for the browser) but also for server development. So it's also like pip in Python-land.
Nodejs on the other hand is more like a combined Python + webserver. It has the v8 runtime that executes .js (like Python executes .py files), various libraries you can import and use, plus a fast webserver built in.
On Node you can run frameworks similar to Django or flask (e.g. Express is a popular one).
The purpose of npm is indeed downloading the various libraries, but not just for client development (to write JS for the browser) but also for server development. So it's also like pip in Python-land.
Nodejs on the other hand is more like a combined Python + webserver. It has the v8 runtime that executes .js (like Python executes .py files), various libraries you can import and use, plus a fast webserver built in.
On Node you can run frameworks similar to Django or flask (e.g. Express is a popular one).