Node.js was created in 2009. In comparison, JavaScript and the web are much older. In a short time Node.js has become a major part of the server-side and tooling landscape.

This post gives a brief timeline of Node.js and related projects.

• A little bit of history
• 2009
• 2010
• 2011
• 2012
• 2013
• 2014
• 2015
• 2016
• 2017
• 2018
• 2019
• 2020

A little bit of history

JavaScript is a programming language that was created at Netscape as a scripting tool to manipulate web pages inside their browser, Netscape Navigator.

Part of the business model of Netscape was to sell Web Servers, which included an environment called Netscape LiveWire, which could create dynamic pages using server-side JavaScript. Server-side JavaScript existed before Node.js but had not gained wide adoption.

One factor in Node’s rise was timing: JavaScript was increasingly seen as a serious language, partly thanks to “Web 2.0” apps like Google Maps and Gmail.

Browser competition drove big improvements in JavaScript engine performance. V8, the engine that powers Node.js, is the same engine used in Chrome.

Node.js also introduced a clear model for async, non-blocking I/O in JavaScript on the server, which suited many use cases well.

2009

• Node.js is born
• The first form of npm is created

2010

• Express is born
• Socket.io is born

2011

• npm hits 1.0
• Big companies start adopting Node: LinkedIn, Uber Hapi is born

2012

• Adoption continues very rapidly

2013

• First big blogging platform using Node: Ghost
• Koa is born

2014

• The Big Fork: io.js is a major fork of Node.js, with the goal of introducing ES6 support and moving faster

2015

• The Node.js Foundation is born
• IO.js is merged back into Node.js
• npm introduces private modules
• Node 4 (no 1, 2, 3 versions were previously released)

2016

• The leftpad incident
• Yarn is born
• Node 6

2017

• npm focuses more on security
• Node 8 - 9
• HTTP/2
• V8 introduces Node in its testing suite, officially making Node a target for the JS engine, in addition to Chrome
• 3 billion npm downloads every week

2018

• Node 10 - 11
• ES modules: .mjs experimental support

2019

• Node 12 - 13
• Work on Deno started to move server-side JS into the next decade with modern JavaScript support

2020

• Node 14 - 15
• GitHub (owned by Microsoft) acquired npm

Lessons in this unit:

0:	Introduction
1:	The Node Core Modules
2:	Differences between Node and the Browser
3:	Node, the difference between development and production
4:	The Node.js Event Loop
5:	▶︎ A brief history of Node.js
6:	Understanding process.nextTick()
7:	Understanding setImmediate()
8:	How to check the current Node.js version at runtime
9:	Why should you use Node.js in your next project?
10:	Introduction to Node.js