Node.js – well-deserved hype or another myth?

Node.js is the hottest new technology in Silicon Valley and is currently being used by Microsoft, VMWare, Ebay, Yahoo, Paypal, Walmart, Uber, LinkedIn, Google, PicsArt and many more top tech companies. All these companies truly believe in the advantages of this technology. Node.js is widely spread also among the software developers, employed in Armenia. While describing it, they often say “real-time” or “highly scalable” and many other ear-catching terms, but what is Node.js in reality?

Within this article through 7 sentences I will try to explain the advantages of using Node.js

1.Node. js ensures real-time communication between clients and servers

The web used to be about consumption, which means, we, as users, used to just view web pages, watch videos, looking at pictures. Now the web has become more about interaction. We want to interact with each other, and we want to do it in real time: chat, gaming, constant social media updates, collaboration. All these features require real time communication between users, clients, and servers across the web. What’s more, this real-time communication needs to happen at massive scale, supporting hundreds, thousands, even millions of users.

2. Node. js is an event-driven, server-side JavaScript environment

Node runs JavaScript using Google V8 engine, which provides a server-side runtime environment, compiling and executing it at lightning speeds. How does that speed increase happen? The answer is simple. Google V8 engine compiles JavaScript into native machine code, instead of interpreting it or executing it as bytecode.

3. Node.js is open source, and cross-platform, running on Mac OSX, Windows, and Linux

4. It takes little time to learn Node.js

Node.js is based on JavaScript, which is a popular language, well known by millions of developers. This lowers the learning curve of Node.js, since most developers won’t have to learn a new language to start building Node.js apps.

5. All I/O intensive operations in Node.js are performed asynchronously

Node.js maintains an event loop which manages all asynchronous operations. When a Node application needs to perform a blocking operation (I/O operations, heavy computation, etc) it sends an asynchronous task to the event loop, along with a callback function, and then continues to execute the rest of its program. The event loop keeps track of the asynchronous operation, and executes the given callback when it completes, returning it’s results to the application. This allows you to manage a large number of operations, such as client connections or computations, letting the event loop efficiently managing the thread pool and optimize task execution.

6. Node.js is community driven

It has an enriching open source community which has produced many excellent modules to add additional capabilities to Node.js applications. One of the most famous is Socket.io, a module to manage persistent connections between client and server, enabling the server to push real-time updates to clients. This amazing technology allows you to program real-time applications simply, with very little code.

7. +++

Having all these advantages, Node.js also has another important advantage, especially in Armenia. Very few developers know Node.js, which increases your chances to find a better job as a back-end developer.

In Armenia very few training centers offer training courses on Node.js. Based on the market needs assessment currently the demand of the specialists working with Node.js is very high and if you want to be one of the highly-demanded specialists, you can attend the training course “Real-time webs with Node.js“, offered by Microsoft Innovation Center.

If you have questions, please call us at (010) 545 343, (099) 545 343, (041) 545 343, and we will be happy to answer your questions.