If you want to use JavaScript, Tonic (http://tonicdev.com) is exactly this workflow. It has every single package on npm already pre-installed (so absolutely no set up - straight to code), and gives you a complete node environment to play around with. It also has time-traveling abilities that can rewind the entire state of the computer (http://blog.tonicdev.com/2015/09/10/time-traveling-in-node.j... ). When you are done you can download the file and it will work exactly the same in node.

Would love to hear your thoughts if you try it.