What is the V8 engine?

V8 is an open-source, high-performance JavaScript and WebAssembly engine developed by Google, written in C++. It is used in Google Chrome and Node.js. V8 compiles JavaScript directly to native machine code using Just-In-Time (JIT) compilation — rather than interpreting it line by line — making execution dramatically faster. V8 implements the ECMAScript standard and handles memory management through its garbage collector. When Node.js was created, Ryan Dahl embedded V8 into a C++ program and added APIs for file system, networking, and other OS-level operations. V8 continuously evolves to support new ECMAScript features and optimize performance, which benefits both Chrome and Node.js users simultaneously.