WebProgramming:Beginner
lastmod 2026-03-04created 2022-10-263 edits
Web programming basics for beginners.
Thoughts on the package.json file in NodeJS
One of the reasons Backend developers feel overwhelmed when they look at a Frontend Boilerplate at the start of a project.
In web history, Frontend development began before the browser wars. (Starting from the history of JavaScript)
- package.json in Node (more precisely, npm)
- is equivalent to setup.cfg in Python (more precisely, pip).
Historically, the web started from the browser, so it did not start from js but from the
<script>
tag inside html.
And javascript could not be used on the Backend.
- So the very premise is that javascript starts out assuming client distribution,
- while the Backend is learned starting from a single execution.
If you assume distribution, you have to think about packaging with npm; otherwise, you start by thinking about running a single file like main.py.
As counterevidence, the Hello, World examples of node's express and python's flask look similar.
It is node main.js vs python main.py. Structurally they are identical.
From a computer science point of view, node and python are both the same kind of Interpretter.