node.js

Node.js is a programming language made primarily for creating application mini-servers, especially for APIs and RPC type applications.

It's based on - and actually is - JavaScript, just server-side. Typically JavaScript is something that runs client-side, in your web browser, for instance.

In Node.js, you construct "mini-servers", which can listen for HTTP traffic but also deal with almost any other protocol you can think of. Instead of running alongside a web server daemon, Node.js actually creates a custom server process on the fly. This makes it waaaaaay more customizable than running Apache or IIS with, say, PHP or ASP.NET, respectively.

I just started messing around with it last year for some API stuff related to my work. Sorry, I can't get very specific about that due to my long-term contractual obligations. Suffice to say it's compact and extremely quick to set up. An HTTP server can be thrown together with just a few lines of code (although you need a little more than that to do anything terribly useful).

We got any other node.js people in here?

There's someone I know in your neck of the woods who really likes node.js and has built a very feature-rich remote media center system on a Raspberry Pi with it.

He showed me a demo and it was very cool. I'd post the demo here but I'm not sure if he wants the video shared or not. I'll have to ask him if it's ok.

I know you're also into Raspberry Pi (we'll have to start a topic thread on that, too) so that seems like something you might find fascinating.

We use node.js and the Go programming language quite a bit for projects and you might say we have quite a collection of Raspberry Pis with many breadboards and add-on modules.

Node.js is perfect for creating rapidly-prototyped remote controls via wireless networks. It lets us very easily create custom protocol servers.

I started studying node.js a while back but didn't go very far with it yet. For web development, I still prefer the feature-rich PHP language. PHP is extremely powerful.

Node.js is capable of running complex web applications but if you're doing mostly HTML output type stuff (web pages, forums, e-commerce), PHP still isn't a bad way to do it. Personally, I wouldn't use node.js over PHP for that kind of thing (though I don't do web development) because PHP contains so many built-in features tailored specifically for web stuff.