web dev//runtime//V8

V8 is the JavaScript engine developed by Google: it compiles JS and TypeScript to machine code and executes it, and it is the heart of Chrome, Node.js and Cloudflare Workers. The engine is the same everywhere and only the runtime around it changes, so JS executes the same way but the available APIs differ:

V8 is the JavaScript engine developed by Google: it compiles JS and TypeScript to machine code and executes it, and it is the heart of Chrome, Node.js and Cloudflare Workers. The engine is the same everywhere and only the runtime around it changes, so JS executes the same way but the available APIs differ:

In the browserV8 runs the frontend JS (the dist/ that Vite produces).

In Node.jsV8 plus system APIs (filesystem, HTTP, streams) makes a backend server.

In WorkersV8 plus Cloudflare APIs (D1, R2, KV) makes edge functions, each request a lightweight V8 isolate instead of a full process, so they start almost at once.