Why Should You Consider Using Node.Js Development? A Definitive Guide

Why was the community of Javascript developers happy?

-Because their one Nod to Node.js made the developing cycle much easier and faster!

Node.js made life easier for well-known web/mobile applications namely LinkedIn, PayPal, Netflix, eBay, Walmart, and Mozilla. All of these Node.js enterprise apps have phenomenally taken over the market reflecting top-notch performance, scalability, resilience, versatility, and agility.

In the last few years, Node.js development has gained immense popularity among back-end developers. But why? To answer this, we need to understand the reason behind the origin of Node.js in our software world.

This post consists of an in-depth understanding of what is Node.js, why it gained popularity, and its future developments and projects.

Origin of Node.js

Did you know Node.js is just 14 years old? If you compare it with 28-year-old JavaScript and the almighty 34 years old Internet – Node.js is just a kid. But, this technology has created an impact in the software development industry that others can’t. Again this time, the latest version of Node.js 20 is making a lot of buzz in the dev community due to some of the amazing and exciting features, like the experimental Permission Model, a stable test_runner, an updated v8 JavaScript engine to 11.3, Ada to 2.0, and etc.

In the year 2009, the first code for Node.js was written by Ryan Dahl. During the initial days, Node.js only worked on Mac OS X and Linux.

But what made Ryan think about the idea of Node.js development? It’s the V8 engine. Team of Chrome browser created their own JavaScript engine known as V8 engine. This engine can convert raw code directly into machine code, enabling the JavaScript engine to operate faster.

Now, as JavaScript showcased its real potential with speed and agility in web browsers – Ryan thought how about using it for developing:

• Mobile Applications
• Desktop Applications
• Servers

Netscape’s (where Node.js was created) business model included doing trading of Web Servers, which featured a program called Netscape LiveWire that enabled its users to build dynamic pages using server-side JavaScript. Unfortunately, Netscape LiveWire failed, and server-side JavaScript didn’t gain traction until Node.js was introduced.

Did you know that 85% of respondents said that they built their web apps on Node Click To Tweet

The Node.js engine, V8 (also known as Chrome V8 because it is part of Chromium Project’s open-source JavaScript engine), improved greatly due to the competition. Therefore, the latest version of Node JS – Node.js 21 comes with an upgraded V8 engine – v11.8.

Node.js was built in the right place at the right time, but it isn’t the sole reason for its current popularity. It introduces many new ideas and methodologies for server-side JavaScript development. Probably, this is the reason Node.js for product development has started becoming the top choice for enterprises.

Check out this 2022 survey by Stack Overflow, in which developers were asked about their favorite technologies they are using. And Node.js topped the list, with 47.12% of developers preferring it over others.

So without any further ado, let’s move to our next section of how Node.js works.

How Node.js Works?

What began as just a small idea has grown into one of the most popular open-source web technology with an MIT license, a large community, and hundreds of vital add-ons. Not to mention the majority of software development community, which, despite the abundance of viable technologies, has chosen to learn Node.js for web development.

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To understand the working on Node.js, let's take one simple example.

Imagine you went to McDonalds to get your favorite meal combo. Now you ordered the food, and it was delivered instantly. But all of a sudden, the whole McD’s floor got crowded as group came for a birthday celebration. As there was only one person managing the orders, things went wrong. Because if you place another order, you have to wait until other orders are delivered.

This issue could be easily addressed by employing more staff who can take and manage the food orders. Eventually leading to more orders being served at once.

Node.js is an event-driven system. In essence, the server is made up of a single thread that processes one event after another. Consider every new thread as a new employee who manages the order. And the browsers are the birthday party group who are hungry and want to order food.

While you are reading this article, the new version of NodeJS is already live. Do check once you’re done reading this piece.

Whenever a new request arrives, a dedicated thread is allocated to it. Thus, when there is a blocking IO operation, the server initiates processing it and registers a callback function rather than waiting for it to get completed. The server then quickly moves on to the next event (maybe another request).

The server will process (i.e. continue working on the request) when the IO action is completed by performing the callback as soon as it has time. Hence, the server never needs to launch new threads or switch between them, resulting in very little overhead.

This system excels at CPU-intensive applications, which is one of the advantages of Node.js. CPU-intensive activities need a great deal of reasoning and take longer to compute. Because a separate thread handles each new request, it relieves the main thread of heavy lifting, allowing the system to run faster and do more complex calculations.

Event Loop

The event loop is a program that waits for events to occur and then dispatches them when they do. Another crucial aspect to remember is that both JavaScript and Node are single-threaded.

Do you recall our McD’s example? Regardless of the size of the crowd, Node would only have one employee serving food.

Unlike other languages, which create a new thread or process for each request, NodeJs accepts all requests and delegates most of the work to other system workers. With the help of the OS kernel, a thing called the ‘Libuv’ library takes care of this. When background workers complete their tasks, they transmit events that are registered with NodeJs callbacks.

Callbacks

So what are callbacks then? They are essentially functions that are supplied as parameters to other functions and are summoned when certain circumstances are met.

Most of the time, NodeJs developers construct event handlers that are called when particular Node events occur. NodeJs is a multi-threaded system that is extremely fast. Yes, even if it’s only a single thread.

This is because most programs don’t just consist of time-consuming numeric, arithmetic, and logic tasks. They constantly write to the file system, send network requests, or connect to peripherals like the external device or console. In instances like this, Node.js shines. When it encounters them, it swiftly delegates the task to someone else and smartly handles other incoming requests.

So now let’s come to our main part of the post.

When Should You Use Node.js Development?

To answer the question in one sentence: If you wish to develop a real-time web application – Node.js application architecture is the best choice.

One of the most significant advantages of Node.js development is that it can be used to create a wide range of business solutions. With NodeJS development services and solutions, you can outperform your competitors. Also, by utilizing top Node.js frameworks, you can enhance support for developing apps effortlessly.

Some prominent things for which Node.js can be used are as follows:

For Developing Data Streaming Applications:

With more and more digital content consumption, data streaming web applications saw a rise in demand. You just need a good internet bandwidth for watching your favorite movie or series that too without downloading. With the help of a built-in stream module of the Node.js web application, you(developers) can process big-chunk data into smaller packages and sequentially.

For Developing Microservices:

Do more with less code; the nature of Node.js makes it easy for developer to build scalable solutions. Multiple microservices can result in code duplication. For designing microservices frameworks, Node.js is preferred as they are simple to design. Because it extracts most of the underlying or essential system. So, developing a microservice with NodeJS can be simple and more efficient.

Suitable For IoT Applications:

MQTT, a publish-subscribe-based messaging protocol, is widely used in IoT applications. WebSockets are used for transport and encapsulation in this protocol. Both MQTT and WebSockets have a lot of support and are simple to use with Node.js. Furthermore, Node.js is the most trusted platform for IoT app development because it works effectively with write and readable channels and streams.

Scalable Application Development:

For applications that are expected to experience high-peak loads and scalability, Node JS application development services are the answer. A famous example of this is Uber. The global taxi network is always developing and expanding; yet, the nature of the taxi sector produces high demand peaks around the holidays. Node.js is an excellent solution for these problems. (P.S.:Uber is built using Node.js)

Communicate With API:

To interact with databases or other external services, nearly all web applications require a back-end. Thanks to the large community, you can simply locate a library to develop a REST or GraphQL API. Node.js was formerly only suggested for applications with a small number of CPU-intensive tasks. However, after introducing version 10.5.0 – threads have been available to carry out such complex processes.

For Developing SPA:

Node.js can create a single-page application (SPA) that looks and feels like a desktop program, just as single-page web pages. Node.js is a fantastic fit for constructing social networking platforms, dynamic websites, and email solutions because of its flexible possibilities. Furthermore, Node.js is the greatest choice for SPA development because of its asynchronous back-end data flow quality.

Avoid Using Node.Js Development For The Following Things

Node.js development has many benefits, but it won’t provide the best performance for some application’s needs or processes. Here are the points for which developers or businesses must avoid Node.js:

• Processing CPU heavy and complex applications: Node.js uses an event-based, non-blocking I/O architecture and only has one CPU – all of that intensive CPU processing would block incoming requests. As a result of the high-end number crunching, the thread might get stuck.
• Developing web applications on the server-side with relational databases: You can also develop a standard web application on the server using Node.js and express.js. However, the responsiveness of Node.js will be hampered if these web applications consume a lot of CPU power. Because Node.js’ Relational DB tool is still in beta, it’s best to use other environments to conduct relational operations.
• Developing simple CRUD application: You can use Node development services for such applications, but the performance and power for which Node.js is known would remain useless. Hence, it is strongly recommended to go for other frameworks or environments for developing simple HTML application instead of Node.js.

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Reasons to Consider NodeJS Development For Your Next Project

It's been 12 years since the birth of Node.js. Many top-rated Node.js development companies have got a firm grip and expertise in developing robust applications using the tech stack and its top frameworks like ExpressJS, NestJS, MeteorJS, and Fastify.

As you can see, there are various scenarios in which using Node.js would improve the performance and stability of your application. At the same time, when considering why businesses choose Node.js in custom web development services, they need to consider other more organizational factors than technological.

Wondering how much does it cost to build a Node JS application? Join us as we detail the factors that would help you determine the cost of Node.js application development.

• Faster time to market: Node.js is especially useful for curbing the time-to-market cycle. It is lightweight – which means Node.js can drastically cut application development time without changing the existing functionality. You can get from concept to end-product in no time with Node and also cost for developing Node JS application is convenient
• Scalability: Node.js is built with scalability in mind. It’s one of Node’s most important features for startups looking to scale over time. App-based startups prefer to develop lightweight and quick systems with a strong real-time response that can be scaled up later and add more modules or structures to existing ones.
• Works for both Front-end and Back-end: Node.js also has the advantage of being a universal programming language that can be used for both front-end and back-end development. This basic feature makes a client’s life easier, as finding a team of skilled full-stack developers might be challenging.

• Huge community: Many active Node.js enthusiasts and a large number of software developers from Microsoft, SAP, IBM, and many more regularly contribute to the ever-evolving and nurturing Node.js community to help other developers.
• Rich Ecosystem: The Node package ecosystem, which includes NPM (a node package management), is the world’s largest and fastest-growing software registry. It includes many libraries and reusable templates that you can use in your code to add more value with fewer resources and time. In the NPM ecosystem, there is a module available for almost anything a software developer can think of. So, with the installation of NodeJs and NPM on your system, you can easily build a website using various front-end frameworks like TezJS.

The above-stated benefits make Node.js vs other backend technologies better and more beneficial for a ‘breakthrough’ in the tough-to-crack tech landscape. Leverage the above range of features with the best possible outcome by hiring a Node.js web development company comprise of confident professionals carrying years of experience and expertise in the domain. Ask the right questions to hire Node JS developers matching your unique project requirements.

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To Conclude

All the credit for Node.js richness and simplicity goes to node package manager (NPM). Did you know NPM is the largest software registry? It contains more than 1.3 million code packages. And the best part – it’s free to use. Well, this means developers and Node.js development companies have a vast pool of packages to use for developing top-notch scalable applications. As mentioned above, Node.js is also capable of processing numerous requests at the same time with ease. It takes less time and money to handle your application’s traffic than competing tech stacks.

Look at these amazing statistics of Node.js:

• Node.js is a favorite choice of developers for enterprise applications. 43% of developers use it for the enterprise application.
• After adopting Node JS, PayPal experienced a 35% reduction in average response time on their page.
• Node JS can enhance the application’s performance by 50%.
• It also saves 58 percent on development costs.

So businesses looking to develop scalable and robust web applications, it is recommended to choose top-rated Node.js development company with a niche understanding of the technology.

Among the several open-source runtime environments available, Node.js is unquestionably the best. Even though it is simple and commonly utilized, the environment can only be effective and efficient for businesses if used appropriately with the help of an expert.

Tweet Reference

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