I’m slowly working my way through Object-Oriented JavaScript by Stefan and Sharma. All the tutorials I’ve seen online suggest using the web console in browsers for typing and testing code. While this method is fine for one or two lines of code, it is not the most efficient way for larger programs.
This is where node.js comes in handy. According to its website, it is a platform built on Chrome’s JavaScript runtime for easily building fast, scalable network applications. For a JavaScript newbie, it means you can write your code in a text editor and run it outside a browser environment. All you have to do is
- open the node.js command prompt (via the windows menu)
- change to the directory where the JavaScript program is located
- type node filename.js