In the ever-evolving landscape of software development, Node.js stands out as a powerful and versatile tool. Built on Chrome’s V8 engine, Node.js enables developers to run JavaScript code on the server side, outside of a web browser. Its unique features and capabilities have made it a game-changer in the industry, offering unmatched performance, scalability, and efficiency.
Around the year 2009, when Ryan Dahl (the original developer of NodeJS) released the initial version of NodeJS it was surprising for developers because they couldn’t have imagined before that this language was so powerful and could be used to write the code for the backend application as well. Today, NodeJS is getting a lot of well-deserved hype and many companies switched their tech stack to NodeJS including Paypal, LinkedIn, Uber, Yahoo, Medium, GoDaddy, Groupon, and Walmart.
NodeJS is the hottest technology across the world, especially in Silicon Valley. It is the perfect skill to open up amazing career opportunities for any software developer. Well, every programming language has some benefit of using it but what makes Node so special? why it is getting so much hype among developers? what are some of its cool features and why so many companies are using it for different kinds of applications? Let’s discuss some reasons to learn NodeJS in 2024
What is Node.js
Node.js is an open-source JavaScript runtime built on Chrome’s V8 engine. It allows developers to run JavaScript code on the server side, outside of a web browser. Node.js is known for its fast performance, event-driven architecture, and non-blocking I/O model, making it ideal for building scalable and efficient network applications. It has a rich ecosystem of libraries and modules through npm (Node Package Manager), making it easy to extend its functionality. Overall, Node.js is a versatile platform widely used for developing a variety of applications, from web servers to real-time applications.
Master the art of building dynamic web applications with our “Full Stack Development with React & Node JS” course. From front-end React to back-end Node JS, gain hands-on skills for a successful career in full stack development. Enroll now and elevate your web development expertise!
10 Reasons To Learn Node.js
In this article, we’ll explore why Node.js is a game-changer in software development. Whether you’re a seasoned developer or new to the field, mastering Node.js is crucial. From real-time applications to cross-platform development, Node.js offers unmatched performance and scalability. Join us as we uncover its key features and advantages, making it a must-have skill for any developer as we learn the top reasons to learn Node.js in 2024
1. Real-Time Applications
Today the web has become much more about interaction. Users want to interact with each other in real time. Chat, gaming, constant social media updates, collaboration tools, eCommerce websites, real-time tracking apps, marketplace- each of these features requires real-time communication between users, clients, and servers across the web. Building a real-time application is challenging because it happens at a massive scale, supporting hundreds, thousands, and even millions of users. The real-time communication between the client and server requires fast and persistent I/O. NodeJS is best suited for these kinds of applications. The synchronization process with NodeJS is fast and in an organized manner as events drive the architecture serves both the client-side and server-side. The event loop through the web socket protocol handles the multiuser function. It works in TCP and avoids HTTP overload. NodeJS also makes RTA lightweight, scalable, maintainable, and usable from a software development standpoint.
2. Asynchronous Programming
Node.js utilizes an event-driven, non-blocking I/O model, which allows it to handle asynchronous operations efficiently. In traditional synchronous programming, each request is processed one after the other, leading to potential delays when handling multiple requests concurrently. However, Node.js leverages its event loop to manage asynchronous operations, ensuring that requests are processed asynchronously without blocking the execution of other tasks. This asynchronous nature is particularly beneficial for applications that require real-time updates or handle a large number of concurrent connections, such as chat applications, online gaming platforms, or streaming services. By enabling developers to write code that can handle multiple operations simultaneously, Node.js offers improved performance, responsiveness, and scalability compared to traditional synchronous programming models.
3. Cross-Platform Development
Node.js is designed to be platform-independent, meaning that developers can write code using Node.js that can run on various operating systems, including Windows, macOS, and Linux, without requiring significant modifications. This cross-platform compatibility is made possible by Node.js’s use of JavaScript as its programming language, which is supported by all major web browsers and can be executed on different platforms using the Node.js runtime environment. As a result, developers can build applications that are easily portable across different environments, reducing the need for platform-specific code and simplifying the development, testing, and deployment processes. This capability makes Node.js an attractive choice for developing applications that need to run on multiple platforms, such as web servers, command-line tools, or desktop applications.
4. Low Learning Curve
No matter what language you are using for the backend application you’re going to need JavaScript for the front end anyway so instead of spending your time learning a server-side language such as PHP, Java, or Ruby on Rails, you can spend all your efforts in learning JS and mastering in it. JavaScript the same language can be shared on both client-side and server-side. So a developer who knows JS can act as a full-stack dev without having to learn additional languages. The front end and back end are also easier to keep in sync because of the single language used on both sides. For startups, this is one of the big advantages of getting their job done quickly with fewer developers. There is no need to divide the team for both sides. It provides higher productivity and the ability to share or reprocess the code and within the team offers a smooth exchange of knowledge.
5. Performance and Scalability
NodeJS is built upon Chrome V8’s engine powered by Google. It allows Node to provide a server-side runtime environment that compiles and executes JavaScript at lightning speeds. The V8 engine compiles JavaScript into native machine code, instead of interpreting it or executing it as bytecode and that makes Node really fast. Lightweight Javascript achieves high performance with fewer lines of code when compared to Java or C. The Chrome V8 engine is also being updated constantly as Google continues to invest heavily in it. The reason behind the fast execution of JavaScript is its Event Loop. In a typical application server model that uses blocking I/O – in this instance, the application has to handle each request sequentially, suspending threads until they can be processed. This can add complexity to an application and, of course, slows the application down.
Node.js maintains an event loop that manages all asynchronous operations for you. It allows you to use non-blocking I/O in which threads (in this case sequential, not concurrent), can manage multiple requests. If one can’t be processed, it’s effectively ‘withheld’ as a promise, which means it can be executed later without holding up other threads. This whole process allows developers to manage a large number of operations utilizing less memory and resources. Paypal who used Node in their application found that the application was built twice as fast with fewer people, in 33% fewer lines of code and 40% fewer files. More importantly, they doubled the number of requests served per second while decreasing the average response time by 35%. So Node is an excellent choice for building highly scalable applications.
6. NPM Support With Rich Modules
Only a few programming languages offer a rich package ecosystem as NodeJS. When you install Node.js, it automatically installs the programs of NPM (Node Package Manager). Any Node.js developer can package their libraries and solutions into a module that anyone can install using Node’s official package manager, NPM. Thousands of libraries and tools for Javascript development are gathered on NPM. With the constant support of the NodeJS community, NPM focuses on encouraging users to add new packages, so you have countless readymade solutions for the specific issue. Now it has more than 60K modules and it’s still growing every day. Isn’t it a good idea to use these modules for some common features instead of writing the code from scratch? This great feature of Node reduces complexity, makes development simpler, and faster, and allows you to share, refresh and even reuse the code effortlessly.
7. Useful Single Codebase
Using Node It’s easy to send and synchronize the data between server-side and client-side coding. Because of using the same language Javascript on both sides your source code will be cleaner and more consistent. You will be using the same naming convention, the same tools, and the same best practices. The time of the developers is saved to a greater extent because of this feature.
8. Data Streaming
Just like Array in data structures, streams are the collection of data and to handle this data it requires top-notch I/O data processing methods. Node.Js comes to the rescue since it’s good at handling such as I/O process which allows users to transcode media files simultaneously while they are being uploaded. It takes less time compared to other data processing methods for processing data. Node.js streams help simplify the I/O tasks tremendously. There are four types of streams used by node.js- Writable, Readable, Duplex, and Transform, along with the Pipe method to handle data. The developers can take amazing advantage while forming features like processing files when they are uploaded. NodeJS streams enable apps to consume less memory while dealing with massive amounts of data to function faster. This feature gives more benefits to the developer working on real-time audio or video encoding.
9. Well Suited For Building Microservices
As we have discussed that NodeJS is highly scalable and lightweight that’s why it’s a heavy favorite for microservice architectures. In a nutshell, microservice architectures mean breaking down the application into isolated and independent services. It makes it easier to update and maintain the architecture as your services are decoupled and you can add new or fix the existing architecture without dealing with the other parts of the applications. NodeJS fixes well for designing such architectures with the help of Node modules which represent the building blocks of NodeJS functions. With this architecture, applications can be independently developed, handled, operated, and tested, which saves you from infrastructure risks. This feature allows code-reusability between the client and server side also it reduces the time and cost of development because you need only to consider new services introduced or updated.
10. Strong Corporate Support
In 2015 a number of companies including IBM, Microsoft, PayPal, Fidelity, and SAP organized a NodeJS Foundation. It’s an independent community aimed at facilitating the development of NodeJS core tools. The foundation of NodeJS was formed to speed up the development of NodeJS, and it was intended to allow broad adoption of it. There is a continuous growth of organizations that make use of Node.js in production. Almost three hundred prominent companies like Medium, and Uber, are included in it.
Conclusion
Node.js is a blessing for software programmers and it plays a significant role in the technology stack. It is the first and foremost choice to build interactive games, chat programs, collaboration tools, instant messages, and much more. We just have mentioned 10 reasons but you could find more apart from the above. NodeJS has huge online community support, it allows you to develop cross-platform apps and if an enterprise lacks its specialized proxy infrastructure, then Node.js can serve as the proxy server. From the points mentioned above, it is clear that due to multiple reasons Node.js is used for the startup or next enterprise projects.
