Learning Node, 2nd Edition

Chapter 12. Node in New Environments

Node has expanded to many different environments beyond the basic server in Linux, OS X, and Windows.

Node has provided a way of using JavaScript with microcomputers and microcontrollers such as Raspberry Pi and Arduino. Samsung is planning on integrating Node into its vision of the Internet of Things (IoT), even though the IoT technology it bought, SmartThings, is based on a variation of Java (Groovy). And Microsoft has embraced Node, and is now working to extend it by providing a variation of Node with its own engine, Chakra, running it.

The many faces of Node are what makes it both exciting and fun.

Node and Mobile Environments

Node has also made its way into the mobile world, but attempting to squish a section on it into this book was beyond my ability to compress the subject down to a minimum. Instead, I’ll point the reader to a book on the topic, Learning Node.js for Mobile Application Development (Packt, 2015), by Stefan Buttigieg and Milorad Jevdjenic.

Samsung IoT and GPIO

Samsung has created a variation of Node called IoT.js, as well as a JavaScript version for IoT technologies called JerryScript. From the documentation, the primary reason for new variations is to develop tools and technologies that work in devices with lower memory than the traditional JavaScript/Node environments.

In one graph accompanying a Samsung employee’s presentation, they show a full implementation of JerryScript with a binary size of 200 KB and a memory ...