What do people mean when they say building a stack or full stack in javascript and how does it relate to Node JS?

Question

I am new to node js. I have been learning how to use the language and still do not see the point of it. I am familiar with javascript/jQuery and angular but don't see how Node can help me with anything yet. All of the explanation mention that it is a choice made when building out the stack in full stack javascript...which confused me even more! Now what is full stack javascript and what is node. Please someone explain this in the most dummified way possible.

Answer 1

So, node.js is just javascript pulled out of the browser and has a few APIs attached to it. How exactly they did that, is another discussion. Node.js in short, is Chrome's V8 engine used to run your Javascript pulled outside of the Chrome browser and left to run as a stand-alone program. Some people, use it to run a web-server, other use it to run some scripts, and pretty much any other normal thing you can run with other languages (not that different from what you can do with python installed on your computer). The advantage is that you can now run JavaScript on both your browser and outside of it. Instead of learning Python/PHP/Ruby etc to run your web-server, you now just learn JavaScript. To be a full-stack JS dev means you can now code both server and front-end in JavaScript.

Side note, if you are just starting out as a beginner in JavaScript, please learn it as it is without worrying about node.js or whatnot. Just understand the main ideas around JS before getting ahead of yourself.