If you are a JavaScript developer you often had listened to the word 'NodeJs'. And After This If You Have a Question In Mind: What exactly is Node.Js? Then Read This article carefully.
Introduction
Node.js is a cross-platform and open-sourced runtime for executing JavaScript outside a browser. a point that should be taken here is that 'Node.js is a runtime and not a programming language'.
Node.js is often used for backend services like APIs, mobile apps, web apps, etc.
History of Node.js
Node.js is 12 years old 🤯, In comparison, Javascript is 26 years old and the Internet is 32 Years old.
JavaScript was used by developers mainly for frontend development but after understanding its true potential Ryan Dahl decided to use it on the backend there was no way to do it and from here the Idea of JavaScript was born.
Node.js was initially written by Ryan Dahl. At first, Node.js supported only Mac OS X and Linux. Dahl led the development and maintenance and later it was sponsored by Joyent.
On November 8, 2009, at the inaugural European JSConf, the Node.js project was first demonstrated by Dahl.
Working of Node.js
Node.js accepts the request from the clients and sends the response, while working with the request node.js handles them with a single thread.
To operate I/O operations or requests node.js use the concept of threads. A thread is a sequence of instructions that the server needs to perform.
It runs parallel on the server to provide the information to multiple clients. Node.js is an event loop single-threaded language. It can handle concurrent requests with a single thread without blocking it for one request. it's also called the Asynchronous nature of Node.js
Node.js is built on Chrome's V8 JavaScript engine.
The reason behind the popularity of Node.js
In the past few years, the adoption of Node.js by big tech companies and individual developers has increased a lot and there are several reasons for these changes.
The Asynchronous nature of Node.js, which we already discussed is one of the main reasons behind the rapid adaptation of Node.js, because of this nature the speed of real-time applications increases a lot.
The huge community support also attracts new developers to learn and use Node.js for their development needs.
Npm which is a package manager of Node.js has a huge number of libraries and packages. Even, npm is the world's largest package manager with more than 1m+ library. This fact makes Node.js superior to others.
Advantages of using Node.js
High-performance for Real-time Applications
Easily Scalable
Single Programming language for both frontend and backend
Huge community support
Cross-platform development
Disadvantages of using Node.js
Unstable APIs
Lack of library support
High demand for experienced resources
Callback hell issue
Immature tooling and dependency management
Companies that use Node.js
LinkedIn
Netflix
Uber
Trello
PayPal
NASA
eBay
Medium
Groupon
Walmart
Mozilla
GoDaddy
Conclusion
Node.js plays important role in developing large, scalable, and high-performing real-time applications. Node.js comes with plenty of benefits which can save a lot of time for a developer using it. however, like all technologies, it also has some disadvantages. So it depends on the use case of the developer whether it should be used or not.
If you still have some doubts about Node.js or whether you should use it or not, you can freely DM me on Twitter or you can contact me at contactpushkaraj@gmail.com