Chapter 3. A JavaScript Primer

It's important to have a solid understanding of JavaScript to write Node.js applications. JavaScript is not a large or complex language, but it may seem unusual, and has a few quirks and gotchas to watch out for.

The recent release of ECMAScript 2015 (previously named ES6) introduces a number of new language features to make JavaScript programming easier and safer. Not all ES2015 features are available in all implementations yet. However, all the ES2015 features we'll mention in this chapter are available in Node.js and in most other JavaScript environments.

In this chapter, we'll familiarize ourselves with JavaScript so we can write Node.js applications with confidence. We will cover the following topics: