Node.js being fairly new to the industry, let me give you a brief introduction on what’s Node and where it is useful.
What is Node.JS
Node.js is a platform built on Chrome’s JavaScript runtime for easily building fast and scalable network applications.
Node is an interface to the V8 JavaScript runtime – the super-fast JavaScript interpreter that runs in the Chrome browser.
Node.js uses an event-driven, non-blocking I/O model that makes it lightweight and efficient, perfect for data-intensive real-time applications that run across distributed devices.
Now you know basics of Node, let me take you to the benefits of using Node
Why Node.js is the best suite
- js is fast: Node.js uses JavaScript in the backend, and that’s enough to understand how fast the codes execute. Moreover, it runs on the Google’s V8 engine, which compiles the JavaScript directly into machine code making it faster than most.
- The ever-growing NPM: Being an open-source technology, node.js has a shared repository of good-to-go tools and modules. The number of modules in the Node Package Manager (NPM) has increased at a considerable pace, just on the verge of overtaking the RoR (Ruby on Rails) gems.
- Real-time web apps: The event-driven architecture of node.js is appropriate for real-time applications, especially chat applications and games. As both the client-side and the server-side are written in JavaScript, the synchronization process is better and quicker. Web socket protocol comes into picture here.
- Productivity: The productivity of a web app increases several folds with node.js because a lot of time is saved in between the lines. Merging the front-end and back-end into a single entity makes it efficient. That also implies a lesser number of employees and more profit on your side. PayPal reported 2 times increase in developer productivity after using node.js.
Prior to Node, many companies were using Rails for the development of products. Of course both rails and node has their own cons and pros. One important point to be noted would be, finding ruby on rails companies would be an easy task as its been in the market for long now.
I hope by now you have understood what are the well known benefits of using Node. Further explaining the ideal cases where Node will be your goto technology.
Node.js will be your ideal choice
- If you’re looking to create real time web apps (chats apps) Node will be the best technology for these type of applications. Ruby and Python can both accommodate these kind of features as well, but Node.js will do it exceptionally well in terms of performance.
- If you’re looking to build APIs It’s perfect for handling lots of requests that are I/O driven (e.g. operations on database) and scales very nicely.
- If you are building a streaming application
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