Nowadays, most corporate organizations worldwide are opting for Node.JS to create their unique and game-changing applications. It seems that Node.JS has something to offer everyone, including Trello, PayPal, Walmart, and even NASA. Now, you may wonder why Node JS is the one. So, let us discuss the reasons why Node.JS is so popular.
About Node.JS
Node.JS is a specific server technology that is used to build and run various types of web applications. Its work is quite similar to the tasks of Spring Framework, Ruby On Rails, and ASP.NET. It works by leveraging JavaScript as the main language, which has a plethora of Plugins and is a lightweight built-in web browser. It can manage those Plugins through the NPM or Node Package Manager and hence, can enable you to custom-build applications as per your needs. Though it may seem like other good web technologies, it still has some specific features that make it really popular among organizations.
Reasons why Node.JS is so popular
It is really fast
Node.JS is mainly a runtime of JavaScript that is powered by V8, created by Google to use in Chrome. This V8 has the power to execute and compile JavaScript at a great speed, mainly because it can compile JavaScript into a machine code that is native. Moreover, Node.JS has an amazing event loop, which is a single thread and can perform all the operations of I/O in an asynchronous manner.
In the case of Node.JS, when an application needs to perform an I/O operation, it sends task and callback actions that are asynchronous to the event loop and, after that, continues to perform the remaining program. On completing the sync operation, the even lop can return automatically to the task to perform a callback. This is unlike the traditional looping, which works by consuming a lot of memory and is very difficult to execute.
Thus, writing and reading to file systems, network connections, and other tasks can be performed at lightning speed with the help of Node. JS. It enables developers to develop highly scalable and fast network applications that can handle bulk amounts of simultaneous connections.
It uses JavaScript
One of the most important reasons for the popularity of Node.JS is it uses JavaScript as its main language while developing applications. To speak honestly, JavaScript is the only option to build web applications in the browser. With the help of this Node.JS, JavaScript has revolutionized the server. This language is common to a maximum number of web developers and hence is driving the world nowadays.
As JavaScript is a language known or used by many developers, the task of transitioning from any other web technology to Node.JS becomes a very easy job. Thus, Node.JS is preferred by most web developers.
It offers high performance
Wal-Mart had a great experience with vNode.JS in 2013, when they had to put their mobile-based traffic through Node.JS on the busiest shopping time of the year, Black Friday. However, on that day, the servers of Wal-Mart did not go over 1% CPU utilization and yet could deploy with almost 200,000,000 users online. On the other hand, PayPal uses Node.JS and has reported increasing the number of requests per second while decreasing the response time to a great extent, like by 35%. All these examples can prove the performance capability of Node. JS.
It is reusable
Another crucial benefit of Node.JS is re-use. The web technologies like ASP.NET or Spring need developers to have knowledge in other languages like Java, VB.NET, or C# to write server-side code. This means all their functions include a minimum of two languages, one on the server side and one on the client side. However, Node uses only JavaScript for both sides. Thus, web developers can interact with only a single language by choosing Node. JS. In addition to this, they can use this many times for future communications.
It is lightweight
Node.JS uses event-driven architecture, meaning everything executed on it is a series of asynchronous callbacks. This helps Node.JS to run on a single thread, unlike other web technologies where a new one is created for every request. Thus, Node.JS not only works as a lightweight but also creates the base of Node’s I/O feature that is non-blocking.
Easy to maintain and modify
Most built applications turn out to be less adaptive over time as new needs are fed. So, they may start creaking under that stress. However, developing services with Node.JS is a lot easier because, with this, a collection of small applications can be built instead of a large, single application. Thus, it can be modified or maintained with ease without changing anything deep inside the code-base.
Conclusion
Thus, with the above-mentioned reasons, you may understand why Node.JS has become so popular among organizations and developers. If you are looking for assistance in software product development, please reach out to us today! Our developers and engineers are well versed with the best practices to create robust software products and boost your success!