Intoduction to NodeJS

Node.js is a platform built on Chrome's JavaScript runtime for easily building fast and scalable network applications. 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. [TutorialsPoint]

Here's a few key point regarding NodeJS,
  • Developed by Ryan Dahl. 
  • Created with the aim of creating real-time websites with push capabilities (websockets).
  • NodeJS is an open source, cross platform runtime environment for server-side and networking applications.
  • Build on V8 engine, Chrome’s JavaScript engine.
  • Uses event-driven, non-blocking I/O model which makes NodeJS lightweight and efficient.
  • Ideal for data-intensive real-time applications that run across distributed devices.
  • NodeJS comes with several JavaScript libraries that help basic programming.
  • NodeJS eco-system ‘npm’ is the largest in the world for open source libraries.

 



Let's see what are key uses of using NodeJS,

  • Not the best platform for CPU intensive heavy computational applications.
  • Ideal for building fast and scalable network applications.
  • NodeJS is capable of handling a huge number of simultaneous connections with high throughput.
  • For each connection NodeJS does not spawn new Thread causing max out of memory instead handle all in single thread using non-blocking I/O model.
  • NodeJS has achieved over 1 Million concurrent connections.
  • Bubbling errors up to NodeJS core event loop will cause crashing the entire program.
So now a few key Advantages,

  • Ability to use single programming language from one end of the application to the other end.
  • NodeJS applications are easy to scale both horizontally and vertically.
  • Delivers improved performance since V8 engine compile the JS code into machine code directly.
  • Performance increased via caching modules into memory after the first use.
  • Easily extensible.
  • Support for common tools like unit testing.
  • Well build ‘npm’ package manager and it’s large number of reusable modules.
At last let's see what are the Disadvantages of using NodeJS,

  • Even though there are number of libraries available, the actual number of robust libraries is comparatively low.
  • Not suitable for computationally intensive tasks.
  • Asynchronous programming model is complex than synchronous model.
Follow my  NodeJS blog series, Coming up Next is "Introduction to NodeJS Coding".

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