As we turn our attention away from the browser, we'll move on to a context that most backend programmers will be familiar with. Node.js provides us with a familiar language, known as JavaScript, that can be used in a system context. While Node.js is known for being a language that servers can be written in, it can be used for most capabilities that other languages are known for. If we wanted to create a command-line interface (CLI) tool, for example, we have the ability to do that.

Node.js also gives us a similar programming context that we have seen in the browser. We get an event loop that allows us to have asynchronous input and output (I/O). How this is achieved is through the libuv library. Later in this chapter, we will explain this library and how it helps to give us the common event loop that we are used to. First, we will look at getting Node.js up and running, along with writing some simple programs that we can run.

In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:

• Getting Node.js
• Understanding the DOM-less world
• Debugging and inspecting code

Let's get started.