NodeMCU is an [eLua](http://www.eluaproject.net/) based firmware for the [ESP8266 WiFi SOC from Espressif](http://espressif.com/en/products/esp8266/). The firmware is based on the Espressif NON-OS SDK and uses a file system based on [spiffs](https://github.com/pellepl/spiffs). The code repository consists of 98.1% C-code that glues the thin Lua veneer to the SDK.
The NodeMCU *firmware* is a companion project to the popular [NodeMCU dev kits](https://github.com/nodemcu/nodemcu-devkit-v1.0), ready-made open source development boards with ESP8266-12E chips.
The NodeMCU programming model is similar to that of [Node.js](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Node.js), only in Lua. It is asynchronous and event-driven. Many functions, therefore, have parameters for callback functions. To give you an idea what a NodeMCU program looks like study the short snippets below. For more extensive examples have a look at the `/lua_examples` folder in the repository on GitHub.