First, read some Node.js facts:
- Many popular and successful web applications and websites have used Node.js.
- Node.js is a platform built on Chrome’s JavaScript runtime.
- Its applications are written in JavaScript.
- Node.js is an open source and a cross-platform runtime environment.
- Node.js offers an event-driven architecture and non-blocking I/O API, using which an application’s throughput and scalability are optimized.
- Conceived in 2009, by Ryan Dahl, Node.js platform uses JavaScript and modules allowing the creation of web servers and networking tools. Its applications can be run on various servers – Mac OS X, Microsoft windows, and Unix.
Still not convinced? Hear more:
It’s fast. And Light.
JavaScript execution is fast, making thus easy to build scalable and fast applications. The single threaded model with event loop is also highly helpful and allows handling multiple client requests. It is one of the major advantages of using Node.js for web applications. Due to the presence of event loop in Node.js, there is no necessity of creating more threads, even when the applications receive numerous concurrent client requests. Therefore, the application utilizes less memory.
Sharing is caring
Sharing packages of library code makes it easier to easily solve problems as the Node Package Manager (npm), with its repository of 50,000 packages, helps the developer with the community developed solutions and answers. Updating, sharing and reusing of code are therefore much easier.
Streams in Node.js
Since Node.js is asynchronous and event-driven, tackling of I/O bound tasks are extremely good. So, what are streams? They are UNIX pipes which enable easy reading of data from the source, and pipe the data to the destination.
Data synchronization between client and server
Data transfer between the client and server happens very quickly because Node.js enables writing JavaScript on both client and server side.
Real-time applications simply love Node.js
Node.js a perfect choice for data-intensive, real-time applications and for sites expected to witness a drastic growth of users. The inbuilt library enables applications to act as a web server.
Building real-time web applications like chat makes Node.js suited for these sort of tasks. Used in game development, event based server, non-blocking driven servers are best suited if the web applications get to handle a large number of real-time users.
If you need more than words and tech-savvy arguments to convince you to at least try Node.js keep in mind that the following (and also popular web apps) use Node.js: Yahoo, PayPal, Ebay, Dow Jones, New York Times and even Microsoft.
Original story here.
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