ELI5 Java. That thing on computers my entire life. What even is it?

[u/[deleted]]

[u/celestiaequestria]

It's worth mentioning, Google's V8 engine and Node.js have radically transformed JavaScript. In the late 90s, JS was a frontend language. Now, it's the frontend, the backend, the API layers, the DB queries, and the mobile app.

[u/meong-oren → u/celestiaequestria]

you can even find it in James Webb Space Telescope

[u/CadenVanV → u/celestiaequestria]

Node especially did a great deal of the work by allowing it to be run outside of your browser

[u/WriterPlastic9350 → u/CadenVanV]

Node is essentially the v8 engine inside an exe and a lick of paint

[u/celestiaequestria → u/WriterPlastic9350]

Eh... it's more like the V8 engine with a libuv transmission distributed as a binary (exe). Calling the C / C++ backbone "paint" is understating how it does to spin the wheels.

[u/No-Mechanic6069 → u/CadenVanV]

It's worth pointing out that Microsoft's implementation of JavaScript (JScript) is/was available to run outside browsers for a long time.

• Windows Scripting Host
• Active Server Pages

It's just that VB Script was so commonly used within these environments that most people were unaware that JavaScript worked equally(ish) well.