V8 Engine
V8 is the name of the JavaScript engine that powers Google Chrome. It's the thing that takes our JavaScript and executes it while browsing with Chrome.
V8 is the JavaScript engine i.e. it parses and executes JavaScript code. The DOM, and the other Web Platform APIs (they all makeup runtime environment) are provided by the browser.
The cool thing is that the JavaScript engine is independent of the browser in which it's hosted. This key feature enabled the rise of Node.js. V8 was chosen to be the engine that powered Node.js back in 2009, and as the popularity of Node.js exploded, V8 became the engine that now powers an incredible amount of server-side code written in JavaScript.
The Node.js ecosystem is huge and thanks to V8 which also powers desktop apps, with projects like Electron.
V8 is written in C++, and it's continuously improved. It is portable and runs on Mac, Windows, Linux and several other systems. V8 is always evolving, just like the other JavaScript engines around, to speed up the Web and the Node.js ecosystem.
JavaScript is generally considered an interpreted language, but modern JavaScript engines no longer just interpret JavaScript, they compile it. JavaScript is internally compiled by V8 with just-in-time (JIT) compilation to speed up the execution.
References
- https://v8.dev/
- https://nodejs.dev/learn/the-v8-javascript-engine
- https://scribe.rip/m/global-identity?redirectUrl=https%3A%2F%2Fitnext.io%2Fhow-javascript-works-in-browser-and-node-ab7d0d09ac2f
Children
Backlinks