Reasons behind preferring Node.js for web application development

Are you aware of the fact that the rapid growth in the use of Node.js has compelled developers to sit back and take note of it? And did you know the fact that many popular and successful web applications and websites have used Node.js? Let your answer be a pronounced Yes or a feeble No. But before knowing which those successful websites are, let us know more about Node.js, and the reasons for it being preferred for web application development, these days.

What is Node.js?

Node.js is a platform which has been built on Chrome's JavaScript runtime. Its applications are written in Javascript. Also, it is an open source and a cross-platform runtime environment that offers an event-driven architecture. Besides that, it offers a non-blocking I/O API, using which an application's throughput and scalability are optimized.

Notably, Node.js is a perfect choice for data-intensive real-time applications and for sites that are expected to witness a drastic growth in the number of users. On the other hand, an inbuilt library enables applications to act as a web server.

Invented in the year 2009, by Ryan Dahl, Node.js platform uses JavaScript and modules and allows to create web servers and also networking tools. Also, its applications can be run on various servers – Mac OS X, Microsoft windows, and Unix.

Reasons to use Node.js for web application development:

It's fast:

Fast and scalable network applications can be built as the JavaScript execution is fast. 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 encouraged

It is all fine to share packages of library code. So if any problem a developer faces, The Node Package Manager (npm ), with its repository of 50,000 packages, helps the developer with the solutions. 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.

Source link: http://nodejsdevelopmentcompany.blogspot.in/2015/06/reasons-behind-preferring-nodejs-for.html