Exciting Reasons That Stimulate Developers to Choose Node.js

Find the reasons for the involvement and evolution of Node.js across client-server environments!

JS stands tall supporting various server-side programming languages ever since. As JS proliferates, the demand for a simultaneous server-side programming language arises with sufficient features to build interactive applications. We have Node.js runtime environment based on a similar concept; build on Chrome V8 JavaScript Engine. It makes use of an event-driven, non-blocking I/O model. Like JavaScript, Node.js is a front-end programming language that makes use of single thread to process tasks quickly. JS tasks are always quick, occupy less memory and are lightweight. Therefore, threading is not required to process Node.js tasks. It has one of the largest ecosystems composed of the largest set of open-source libraries in the world. The use of JavaScript across the stack unifies the language and data format (JSON) allowing the programming to optimally reuse developer resources. Node.js applications allow both clients and servers to interact in real-time (state-full request-response requests) with free data exchange.

Considering all this discussion, Node.js was created to fulfill a certain purpose – to devise a system for building websites with real-time push capability. This is exactly the case of the "Gmail" mail-server application. For this very reason, the event-driven paradigm became the heart of Node.js. PayPal, Netflix, Uber, eBay, LinkedIn, Groupon, PayPal, Walmart, Twitter, Medium, eBay, Trello, Yahoo, Mozilla, GoDaddy, and Airbnb, etc. are some distinguished platforms developed in Node.js.

What makes Node.js exclusive?

Node.js is a server engine that can be edited and adjusted. All the requests are processed as part of an event loop. It can be manipulated alongside other JS tools, UI’s and Connectors. It can run on various platforms like Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, and Unix, etc. JavaScript and Node.js allow you to create simple web servers with just a few lines of code.

Things to Know About Node.js

• Node.js is not a framework.
• It relies on Chrome V8 Engine only.
• Node.js does not support multi-threads.
• It is easily understandable, with little knowledge of JavaScript.
• Node.js is a server capable of executing JavaScript.
• It is an open-source and cross-platform system for building web applications.
• Node.js provides asynchronous and event-driven API’s.

Cues for Node.js Web Application Development

• With Node.js, JavaScript is not just restricted to the client-side, but it is also able to access the server-side (working in the browser). Executing the code on the server this way results in fast processing capability.
• JavaScript is the simplest and the most popular way to develop apps in the browser. It makes Node.js work across platforms and evens out all consistencies.
• Google V8 engine powers Node.js; this works in the same way as JavaScript in the front-end. This makes Node.js as one of the fastest and most dynamic runtimes.
• JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) is a robust and popular data exchange format that is simple and allows developers to build API quickly.
• Node.js community readily shares packages of codes. There are almost 475k code packages in the NPM alone which has grown from package manager to a repository. So in case, anything is challenging, chances are that a solution is already available.
• Node Package Manager (NPM) that is included by default consists of a command line and a database of packages (the registry) and manages packages that are both local to a project and public JavaScript tools. This feature indicates that apps on Node.js consist of smaller modules that you can share. These can be composed and managed each of them, as the nature of developing such modules with Node is care-free and facilitates experimentation. Each package usually takes care of one task, so it is highly effective.
• Node.js comes with fine instrumentation, best practices, and documentation. It is always aimed at uplifting every stage of app development, best performance and readiness for production.

Discussing the Points in Favor of Node.js

• Node.js is easy to learn for any developer familiar with JavaScript
• A runtime environment supporting the caching of modules
• Event-driven input/output (I/O) ensures better request handling
• Same code for both server-side and client-side = painless deployment of web applications
• NPM – the biggest package manager in the software world
• It is also possible to stream large files
• Preferable as a full-stack development framework due to features like Garbage collection, process memory, event looping, Node’s ability to be CPU bound and use asynchronous operations helps save memory and space requirements.
• Node.js applications can be scaled up vertically as well as horizontally.
• Code can directly be compiled from JavaScript into machine code via Google’s V8 JavaScript Engine.
• Node.js combined with JavaScript becomes capable to execute and render code on the browser as well as the server.
• Node.js supports the caching of individual modules.
• It supports creating applications in real-time.
• It can be easily scaled up and extended.

Major Node.js Frameworks

Here is a list of some frameworks supported by Node.js with an elegant syntax. These are simple, stable and are based on MVC web application architecture. These are configuration-centric, often utilize connect style middleware, and offer features like authentication, input validation, caching and some other essential facilities like flexibility and creating dynamic end-to-end REST APIs.

• Express.JS
• Sails.js
• Koa.JS
• Socket.io
• Meteor.JS
• MEAN.io
• Nest.JS
• Keystone.JS
• Loopback.io
• Feathers.JS
• Hapi.JS
• Strapi.io
• Adonis.JS
• Restify.JS

Points To Be Careful About Node.js

• Inconsistently enhancing API
• Not an optimal solution for tasks intensive on CPU in comparison with low-level languages like C, C++, C# or Golang
• Split opinion about the asynchronous approach
• Node.js is still evolving. New API add-ons might be incompatible with changes backward.
• It follows the asynchronous programming approach rather than linear blocking I/O programming.
• Node.js is particularly not suitable for developing large or complex applications as it does not support multi-threaded programming. It queues incoming requests and executes them separately in case long-running tasks have to be processed.

Best Application Types with Node.js

• Chat Applications: For creating a typical, interactive real-time chat application to endure big traffic, intensive data and running across devices.
• Server-Side Web Applications: Node.js can become even more efficient if combined with other runtime environments like Express.js to create apps that are low on CPU computation and can simplify development.
• Data streaming: Node.js can be used to create applications used to process large files, audio/video encoding, etc.
• Dashboards: Node.js often works well for creating monitoring dashboards to collect information from visitors in real-time.

Final Flicker

JavaScript wasn’t even considered a standard full-scale programming language. These days it constitutes an essential percentage of almost every application, with supporting runtime environments, frameworks, classes, and libraries. Node.js gained the credit of bringing JavaScript to the backend helping developers to fill up the gap in the client-side and server-side rendering of applications. This enhancement increases productivity and eases the creation of node.js web application that involves streaming like-in games reducing the load and complexity as compared to Java.

Find more top mobile app developers worldwide on AppFutura.