DEV Community: Ramanand Thakur

🚀 Getting Started with Node.js – from “What is this?” to your first web server

Ramanand Thakur — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 13:01:13 +0000

Node.js lets us run JavaScript outside the browser. In this guide, we’ll install Node, learn the terminal, explore npm, build a real web server, understand event-driven programming, and serve static files — all before jumping into Express.js 🔥

🧠 Why Node.js feels magical

In the previous article, we mentioned that JavaScript was designed to run only in browsers. Then Node.js came along, and suddenly everyone was like, “Hold on… JavaScript can run on servers too?!”

Until then, JavaScript meant:

button clicks
animations
form validation
frontend headaches 😅

But with Node.js, suddenly JavaScript could:

read files
create APIs
talk to databases
stream videos
run backend servers

In this article, I’ll walk you through the exact beginner path I wish someone had shown me earlier.

By the end, you’ll:

✅ Install Node.js
✅ Understand the terminal without fear
✅ Learn npm properly
✅ Build your own Node server
✅ Understand routing
✅ Serve HTML/CSS files
✅ Be fully ready for Express.js

📌 Prerequisites

You only need:

Basic JavaScript knowledge
A laptop 🙂
Node.js v20+ recommended
☕ Coffee (strongly recommended)

🌍 What Exactly is Node.js?

Node.js is a JavaScript runtime built on Chrome’s V8 engine.

That means:

It allows JavaScript to run outside the browser.

Instead of running only inside Chrome or Firefox, JavaScript can now run directly on your computer or server.

📊 Browser JavaScript vs Node.js

💻 Getting Node.js

🟢 Step 1: Download Node

Visit:

Node.js Official Website

Download the LTS version.

💡 Production note: Always prefer the LTS (Long Term Support) version for stability.

🟢 Step 2: Verify Installation

Open terminal and run:

node -v

Example output:

v20.11.0

Now check npm:

npm -v

Example:

10.2.4

Boom 💥 Node installed successfully.

🖥️ Using the Terminal

We all were scared of it initially 😄

Most beginners avoid the terminal initially.

I did too.

Huge mistake.

The terminal is basically your direct communication line with the operating system.

Think of it like this:

GUI	Terminal
Clicking buttons	Typing commands
Slower	Faster
Beginner friendly	Developer powerful

📂 Essential Terminal Commands

Windows

Use:

PowerShell
Windows Terminal

macOS/Linux

Use:

Terminal app

📌 Most Useful Commands

# Show current folder
pwd

# List files
ls

# Change folder
cd folder-name

# Create folder
mkdir my-project

# Create file
touch app.js

📊 Terminal Workflow

🛠️ Editors (VS Code or Claude)

You technically can write Node code in Notepad.

But please don’t torture yourself 😭.

🟦 VS Code (Recommended)

Visual Studio Code

Why developers love it:

Fast
Free
Great extensions
Git integration
Built-in terminal
Excellent Node support

🔌 Extensions I Recommend

Extension	Why
ESLint	Catch JavaScript mistakes
Prettier	Auto formatting
Thunder Client	API testing
GitLens	Git superpowers

🤖 Claude Editor

Many developers also use:

Claude AI

Especially for:

debugging help
refactoring
documentation generation
learning concepts faster
vibe coding (We'll discuss this in detail in future articles)

But honestly?

VS Code + Node is still the gold standard for most beginners.

📦 Understanding npm

npm stands for:

Node Package Manager

This is where Node becomes insanely powerful.

npm lets you install reusable packages instead of reinventing the wheel every time.

🧱 Create Your First Project

mkdir node-demo
cd node-demo

Initialize project:

npm init -y

This creates:

package.json

📄 What is package.json?

Think of it like:

The Aadhaar card or identity card of your project 😄

It contains:

project name
dependencies
scripts
version
metadata

📌 Example package.json

{
  "name": "node-demo",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "main": "app.js"
}

📊 How npm Works

🚀 A Simple Web Server with Node.js

Now the fun part begins 🔥

👋 Hello World Server

Create:

app.js

✅ Minimal Node Server

// Node.js v20

// Import Node's built-in HTTP module
const http = require('http');

// Create server
const server = http.createServer((request, response) => {

  // Send HTTP status code
  response.writeHead(200, {
    'Content-Type': 'text/plain'
  });

  // Send response body
  response.end('Hello World from Node.js 🚀');
});

// Start listening on port 3000
server.listen(3000, () => {

  // Callback runs once server starts
  console.log('Server running at http://localhost:3000');

});

▶️ Run the Server

node app.js

Visit:

http://localhost:3000

And there it is 🎉

Your first Node web server.

⚡ Understanding Event-Driven Programming

This is THE core Node concept.

And honestly?

This is where many folks get confused initially.

🧠 Traditional Programming

Traditional systems often wait for one task to finish before moving to the next.

Like standing in a railway booking queue 🚉.

One person at a time.

🚀 Node’s Event-Driven Model

Node works differently.

Instead of blocking everything:

it listens for events
processes callbacks
handles async tasks efficiently

📊 Event Loop Explained

📌 Simple Event Example

// Node.js Events Module

const EventEmitter = require('events');

// Create event emitter instance
const emitter = new EventEmitter();

// Listen for custom event
emitter.on('orderPlaced', () => {

  console.log('🍕 Pizza order received');

});

// Emit event
emitter.emit('orderPlaced');

Output:

🍕 Pizza order received

🧭 Routing in Node.js

Routing means:

Sending different responses for different URLs.

Example:

URL	Response
`/`	Home page
`/about`	About page
`/contact`	Contact page

✅ Basic Routing Example

// app.js

const http = require('http');

const server = http.createServer((req, res) => {

  // Homepage route
  if (req.url === '/') {

    res.writeHead(200, {
      'Content-Type': 'text/plain'
    });

    res.end('🏠 Welcome Home');

  }

  // About page route
  else if (req.url === '/about') {

    res.writeHead(200, {
      'Content-Type': 'text/plain'
    });

    res.end('ℹ️ About Us');

  }

  // Fallback route
  else {

    res.writeHead(404, {
      'Content-Type': 'text/plain'
    });

    res.end('❌ Page Not Found');

  }

});

// Start server
server.listen(3000, () => {
  console.log('Server started');
});

📊 How Routing Works

📂 Serving Static Resources

Static resources include:

HTML
CSS
JavaScript
Images

Without this, websites would look like 1998 😅.

📁 Project Structure

project/
│
├── app.js
├── public/
│   ├── index.html
│   └── style.css

✅ Serve HTML File

// Node.js v20

const http = require('http');
const fs = require('fs');

const server = http.createServer((req, res) => {

  // Read HTML file
  fs.readFile('./public/index.html', (error, data) => {

    // Handle file read errors
    if (error) {

      res.writeHead(500);

      res.end('Internal Server Error');

      return;
    }

    // Send HTML response
    res.writeHead(200, {
      'Content-Type': 'text/html'
    });

    res.end(data);

  });

});

server.listen(3000);

📄 Example HTML

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>

<head>
  <title>Node Demo</title>
</head>

<body>

  <h1>🚀 Node.js Server</h1>

</body>
</html>

🎨 Serve CSS File

// Simplified CSS serving example

if (req.url === '/style.css') {

  fs.readFile('./public/style.css', (err, data) => {

    res.writeHead(200, {
      'Content-Type': 'text/css'
    });

    res.end(data);

  });

}

🤯 What Broke When I Tried This

TBH, many things 😂

❌ Mistake 1: Wrong File Path

ENOENT: no such file or directory

✅ Fix

Always verify folder structure carefully.

❌ Mistake 2: Port Already in Use

EADDRINUSE

✅ Fix

Another app is using the same port.

Simply, change the port number. (3000 to something else which is not getting used 😄)

❌ Mistake 3: Browser Keeps Loading Forever

Usually happens because:

res.end()

was forgotten.

📈 Why Express.js Was Needed

After writing enough raw Node servers, developers realized:

“Dude… this is becoming repetitive.”

Things became messy quickly:

manual routing
manual headers
repetitive file handling
middleware chaos

That’s exactly why Express.js became popular.

📊 Raw Node vs Express

Express dramatically reduced boilerplate code.

☕ Caffeine Scale

Topic	Complexity
Installing Node	☕
npm basics	☕☕
Routing	☕☕
Event loop	☕☕☕☕

🎯 Onward to Express.js

Now you understand:

✅ Node installation
✅ Terminal basics
✅ npm
✅ HTTP servers
✅ Event-driven programming
✅ Routing
✅ Static files

You’re officially ready for:

🚀 Express.js

But don’t worry — if you missed anything, we’ll come back to some of these topics individually and go way deeper 🚀

And trust me…

Once you use Express routing after raw Node routing, it feels like upgrading from manual gear driving to automatic 😄

📌 Key Takeaways

Node.js lets JavaScript run outside browsers
npm powers the massive Node ecosystem
Node uses event-driven architecture
You can build web servers with built-in modules
Routing and static file serving are fundamental backend concepts
Express simplifies all of this beautifully

📢 What’s Next?

In the next article we’ll cover:

Scaffolding
Installing Express
Request/response lifecycle
Middleware

💬 Your Turn

What confused you most when learning Node?

npm?
terminal?
async programming?
routing?

And did you also use incorrect file path at least once? 😅

📣 Call To Action

If this article helped you:

⭐ Bookmark it
🔁 Share with a beginner developer
🚀 Build your own tiny Node server today
👨‍💻 Follow for more backend deep dives

🚀 Introduction to Express.js – the framework that changed Node forever

Ramanand Thakur — Tue, 26 May 2026 12:34:00 +0000

Express.js made backend development in JavaScript ridiculously simple. Before Express, building APIs in Node felt like assembling IKEA furniture without the manual 😅.

🧠 The JavaScript Revolution

There was a time when JavaScript lived only inside browsers.

Frontend? JavaScript.
Backend? Mostly PHP, Java, Python, Ruby, or .NET.

Then came Node.js in 2009 and everything changed.

Suddenly, developers could write JavaScript on both:

🖥️ Client side (browser)
🌐 Server side (backend)

Yes, this was a massive shift.

Teams no longer needed separate frontend and backend language expertise. One language could handle:

UI rendering
API development
Real-time chat apps
Streaming
File handling
Even CLI tools

And this is where Express.js entered like a Bollywood hero in slow motion 🎬.

⚡ Introducing Express

Express.js is a lightweight web framework built on top of Node.js.

Think of Node.js as the raw engine of a car 🚗.

Express gives you:

Steering wheel
Dashboard
Brakes
Air conditioning
And sane defaults 😄

Without Express, building APIs in pure Node means manually handling:

Routing
Headers
Request parsing
Response formatting
Middleware chaining

Express simplifies all of that.

📦 Installing Express

Prerequisites

Node.js v18+
Basic JavaScript knowledge (Watch any quick 30 minutes tutorial on YT)
npm installed
☕ 2 cups of coffee

🛠️ Your First Express Server

mkdir express-demo
cd express-demo

npm init -y
npm install express

Now create server.js.

// Node v20 + Express 4

const express = require('express');

const app = express();

// Route handler
app.get('/', (req, res) => {
  res.send('Hello from Express 🚀');
});

// Start server
app.listen(3000, () => {
  console.log('Server running on http://localhost:3000');
});

Run it:

node server.js

Open browser:

http://localhost:3000

And boom 💥 — backend server ready in less than 10 lines.

🌍 Server-side vs Client-side Applications

This is where many beginners get confused.

Let’s simplify it.

🖥️ Client-side Applications

Client-side apps run in the browser.

Examples:

React
Angular
Vue

Responsibilities:

Rendering UI
Handling clicks
Animations
Calling APIs

🌐 Server-side Applications

Server-side apps run on servers.

Responsibilities:

Database operations
Authentication
Business logic
API responses
Security

📊 How They Talk To Each Other

This separation is the backbone of modern web apps.

📜 A Brief History of Express

Express was created by TJ Holowaychuk around 2010.

Back then, Node.js was still young.

Developers loved Node’s speed, but building servers directly with Node’s http module was painful.

Here’s how raw Node looked:

// Pure Node.js HTTP server 😵

const http = require('http');

const server = http.createServer((req, res) => {
  if (req.url === '/') {
    res.writeHead(200, {
      'Content-Type': 'text/plain'
    });

    res.end('Hello World');
  }
});

server.listen(3000);

Not terrible… until your app grows to 50 routes and middleware chains.

Express solved that elegantly.

⚔️ Node.js vs Traditional Web Servers

Before Node.js, most web servers worked like this:

🧵 Traditional Web Servers (Apache, PHP, Java)

Request Flow

Every request often created:

New thread
More memory usage
Context switching overhead

Works fine… until traffic explodes 🚦.

⚡ Node.js Architecture

Request Flow

Node uses:

Single-threaded event loop
Non-blocking I/O
Async processing

This is why Node became insanely popular for:

Real-time apps
APIs
Streaming
Chat systems
Notification services

☕ Caffeine Scale

Topic	Complexity
Basic Express routes	☕
Middleware	☕☕
Event loop internals	☕☕☕☕

🌱 The Node Ecosystem

One of Node’s biggest strengths is the ecosystem.

The package manager npm exploded in popularity because developers could share reusable libraries instantly.

Today there are millions of packages.

Some famous ones:

Package	Purpose
`express`	Web framework
`mongoose`	MongoDB ORM
`socket.io`	Real-time communication
`dotenv`	Environment variables
`jsonwebtoken`	JWT authentication
`nodemon`	Auto restart during development

📄 Licensing

Express is open-source software released under the MIT License.

That means:

✅ Free to use
✅ Free to modify
✅ Free for commercial projects

This openness helped Express spread rapidly across startups and enterprises alike.

Even huge companies adopted it because there were no painful licensing restrictions.

❌ Common Beginner Mistakes

(Try these fixes you face issue running your first express backend)

1️⃣ Forgetting Middleware

// ❌ req.body will be undefined

app.post('/login', (req, res) => {
  console.log(req.body);
});

✅ Correct Version

// Express 4.18+

app.use(express.json());

app.post('/login', (req, res) => {
  console.log(req.body);
  res.send('Body parsed correctly');
});

2️⃣ Blocking the Event Loop

// ❌ Very dangerous for performance

while(true) {
  // Infinite blocking loop 💥
}

Node works best when operations stay async.

📊 Express vs Traditional Backend Frameworks

Feature	Express.js	Traditional Java Frameworks
Language	JavaScript	Java
Performance	Excellent for I/O	Excellent for CPU-heavy work
Learning Curve	Easy	Moderate
Boilerplate	Minimal	Often verbose
Real-time Support	Excellent	Good
Startup Speed	Fast	Slower

🎯 Conclusion

Express.js became popular because it made backend development:

Simpler
Faster
More readable
More JavaScript-friendly

Key takeaways:

🚀 Express simplified Node.js web development
🌐 Node introduced a non-blocking server model
📦 npm created one of the biggest developer ecosystems ever
⚡ Express is ideal for APIs and real-time applications
🔓 Open-source licensing accelerated adoption worldwide

And honestly? Once you build your first Express API, going back to raw HTTP servers feels like manually washing clothes after buying a washing machine 😄.

🔥 What’s Next?

In the next part, we’ll dive deeper in:

Using the Terminal
Using Editor
Using NPM (Node Package Manager)
Event-Driven Programming
Routing
Serving static resources

👉 Continue to Getting Started with Node.js Guide

💬 Your Turn

What was your first backend framework?

PHP? Django? Spring Boot? Express?

And have you ever crashed a production server accidentally? 😅

📢 Call To Action

If this helped you understand Express better:

⭐ Share it with another developer
🔁 Bookmark for revision
🚀 Try building a tiny REST API today
👨‍💻 Follow for more deep-dive backend content

Useful Android Studio Plugins

Ramanand Thakur — Sun, 08 Jan 2023 00:28:55 +0000

If you want to learn how to create Android apps, Android Studio is where your search will end. It is a platform where you can create Android apps for Android phones, tablets, Android Wear(Smartwatch/Fitness), and Android TV. Kotlin or Java may be used to create the backend of Android applications, while XML can be used to create the user interface (UI) on the front end.

1. CodeGlance

CodeGlance is a type of minimap of the full code that enables you to quickly inspect an entire code block. When the CodeGlance feature is enabled, the entire code is displayed to the side of the screen in minimap style, allowing you to rapidly go to the required area of the code by choosing it from the CodeGlance box.

2. Butterknife Zelezny

ButterKnife Zelezny is an android studio plug-in that lets you generate ButterKnife injections from specific layout XML. It is a very simple plug-in, hence generates Butterknife view injections with just one-click.
The major goal is to increase coding efficiency and make it simple for developers to instantly produce the code of the control binding view.

3. Vector Drawable Thumbnails

We often need to rebuild the project in order to see a vector drawable XML file. We can quickly preview all of the vector drawables using Vector Drawable Thumbnails.

4. Rainbow Brackets

5. Android Drawable Preview

When creating an Android app, you'll need a variety of drawable components. When working on a large project, it might be difficult to recall which drawable you used. Figuring this out takes a lot of time and effort.
This plugin solves this issue by replacing the project view's default file icons with previews of the drawable you've used. You can also browse through the folder to know which all drawables has been used.

6. The Name That Color

The Name That Color plugin in Android Studio will name the colour you currently have copied to your clipboard and provide the name of the colour that is the closest match.

7. String Manipulation

You can do everything with String Manipulation, including toggle cases, switch between camel, snake, and kebab cases, increment duplicates, sort, escape/unescape HTML, Java, SQL, PHP, and XML strings, and run filter operations like grep.

8. ADB Idea

It enables shortcuts for a number of emulator features that are often quite time-consuming, such as clearing the app's data, removing it from the system, or starting the debugger.

9. Power Mode II

Sometimes, coding can get tedious. but not while this plugin is activated. Your fingers are spitting fire and trembling as you read this. Every time anything gets dull to continue, I personally like to use this addon. Start coding while your favourite music is playing. It gets even better when your music syncs with the shaking effect.

10. Tabnine

This article would have been incomplete without mentioning a powerful tool like Tabnine. It is trained on over two million GitHub files and supports 20 programming languages. It looks for patterns in the training data set that may be used to predict the next "token". The use of tabnine speeds up development and helps get eliminate those annoying errors that keep popping up in your code.

Always keep in mind that adding too many plugins to your IDE won't actually speed up your process. Instead, it can substantially reduce the speed of your Android Studio. As a last recommendation, I'd advise choosing a handful of these plugins and experimenting with it and integrating them during your regular work. And continue with it only after noticeable improvement.