Why Node.Js Is Popular Amongst Developers?

Mike Jones
5 min readMay 11, 2021

JavaScript is the most widely used programming language and one of the most widely used software development technologies. Originally developed as a web front end development tool, it has evolved into a major cross-platform mobile development tool that serves as a foundation for a variety of platforms, including Apache Cordova/PhoneGap, React Native, NativeScript, and Appcelerator Titanium. However, JavaScript’s applications do not stop there. The use of JavaScript for server-side programming has recently gotten a lot of attention. Node.js was one of the resources that signaled this change in web growth.

What is Node.JS?

Node.js was created as a server-side framework for developing server and network applications. Node.js is now used as a connection between the front-end and the back-end, and it is now the fastest server-side web application development framework with the ability to operate across distributed devices, thanks to its multi-storied features. The framework is based on the V8 JavaScript engine from Google Chrome.

Unlike the current web response model, where communication is initiated solely by the client. WebSockets are replaced by creative push technology in Node.js. As a result, the server and client will establish a two-way, real-time link and share useful data.

Node.js is much more socially and technically successful than its current competitors, such as PHP, Python, and ROR. Companies who use Node.js, whether industry giants like Microsoft, Walmart, PayPal, or comparatively younger companies like Groupon and Netflix, have overwhelmingly agreed on the benefits of using Node.js growth.

Let’s talk more about its popularity:

It’s very Fast

Node.js is a JavaScript runtime operated by V8, which was created by Google for use in Chrome. V8 is capable of compiling and executing JavaScript at breakneck speeds, owing to the fact that it compiles JavaScript into native machine code. Furthermore, Node.js has a mystical event loop, which is a single thread that performs all I/O operations asynchronously. When an application in Node.js has to perform I/O, it sends asynchronous tasks and callback actions to the event loop, then continues with the rest of the software. When the sync operation is over, the event loop returns to the task to perform the callback. This is in stark contrast to conventional looping, which uses a lot of memory and is extremely difficult to implement.

As a result, reading and writing to the file system, network connections, and databases is very easy in Node. It enables programmers to create highly scalable network applications capable of handling large numbers of concurrent connections with high throughput.

It is Commonly Used

One of the key reasons Node.js is so successful is that it builds web applications using JavaScript as its primary language. To be frank, JavaScript is now the only way to create browser-based web applications. And there’s more! To entice developers, a new and comprehensive architecture is frequently implemented. JavaScript has been revolutionised on the server thanks to Node.js. Many web developers are familiar with the language, and it is undoubtedly driving the world today. Experts predict that the trend will continue in the near future.

Since most developers are familiar with or have used JavaScript at some stage, switching from another web technology to Node.js is easy. As a result, it is a popular option among web developers.

Multi-layered Language

Language reusability is another significant advantage of Node.js. Other web technologies, such as Spring or ASP.NET, enable developers to write server-side code in another language, such as VB.NET, Java, or C#. As a result, all roles must have two languages, one on the client and the other on the server. Node, on the other hand, only uses JavaScript on both the client and server sides. As a result, web developers must communicate in a common language across all layers. Adding to that, this can be used for potential interactions over and over again.

Lightweight

Node.js typically employs a simple event-driven architecture. This means that all you do on it is a sequence of asynchronous callbacks, including every process and call. This allows Node to operate on a single thread, as opposed to other web technologies, which spawn a new thread for each client request. This not only makes it lightweight, but it also makes Node’s non-blocking I/O function possible.

Can be Hosted Anywhere

Or, to put it another way, almost everywhere! After the explosive growth of Node.js usage in recent years, most cloud-based hosting providers and web servers now support Node.js web applications out of the box. Google, Amazon AWS, Heroku, Microsoft IIS, Microsoft Azure, and a slew of other companies are among them.

High Performance

PayPal uses Node.js and claims to have doubled the number of requests per second thus cutting response time in half. Wal Mart, on the other hand, had a great experience with Node.js in 2013, when they used it to handle all of their mobile traffic on Black Friday, the busiest shopping day of the year. Amazingly, Wal Mart servers did not exceed 1% CPU usage on Black Friday, despite having 200,000,000 users online. To manage mobile traffic, LinkedIn switched from Ruby to Node and the the number of servers from 30 to 3, a nearly 90% reduction. The new system was up to 20 times faster than the previous one. All of these statistics show that Node.js is capable of high efficiency.

Easy to Maintain

When new specifications are fed, traditionally designed applications become less adaptable and rigid. They eventually begin to squeak under the strain for which they were not designed. Developing new services with Node.js, on the other hand, is a lot simpler. Instead of a single big application, Node lets you create a bunch of small ones. This makes it much easier to make improvements or incorporate new features without having to go deep into the code base.

Conclusion

Yes, Node.js is really common right now. It has a wealth of features that developers can use to build highly reliable and scalable web applications. But it’s worth a shot until it’s too late. After all, this is the web development environment!

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Mike Jones

Software Engineer & Blockchain Developers - Discuss about new trends in software programming.