> It's like asking people who want to learn Python: step 1, install Django. Or for Java: step 1, install Spring. But Node is just a JavaScript runtime, like Py

> It's like asking people who want to learn Python: step 1, install Django. Or for Java: step 1, install Spring. But Node is just a JavaScript runtime, like Python or Java. Of course, you don't need Node to run JavaScript in browser as it is built-in in the browser, but the built-in JavaScript engine doesn't allow you to easily use it externally. > A simple browser extension doesn't need Node. It just doesn't. The browser itself already packs everything the extension needs. You don't need to use it, as web-ext is just a extra tool to make it do some automation. You can just create some files and use Firefox to load it manually. > And I could go on - why would a JS runtime/framework need Visual Studio, at all? Because it uses native addon which is not written in JavaScript, so it need to be compiled when installing. Since Windows doesn't come with a compiler by default, you need to install it. It is more simpler to install it in Linux. BTW, if you don't want a full visual studio to use native addon in Node.js, you can use https://www.npmjs.com/package/windows-build-tools https://www.npmjs.com/package/windows-build-tools instead, which provides tools you needed to compile things on Windows.