Summary: What do Airbnb, Netflix, Uber, IBM, PayPal and eBay have in common? They have all adopted Node.js in their production. Node.js is a server-side platform wrapped around the JavaScript language for building scalable, event-driven applications. Many smaller enterprises and startups are leveraging this technology in building their platforms. Bhargavkumar Thakkar shares an overview of Node.js.

Node.js was invented by Ryan Dahl in 2009. It is an open-source, server-side platform which is built on Chrome’s JavaScript V8 engine. Node.js is emerging as a gamechanger because traditional JavaScript environment has always been client-side - in a user's browser or in an application that is talking to a server. JavaScript has not been considered when it comes to the server responding to client requests, but that is exactly what Node.js provides.

Node.js is emerging as a global development framework in terms of digital conversion along with large diversity of solutions. Several large and small firms have already embraced it in their production for a real-time explanation along with scalable results.

Benefits of Node.js

Prior to the invention of Node.js, developers usually faced the issue of using different technologies for the client and server-side scripting. Traditionally, JavaScript is the language for front-end designing with the HTML including a rich set of dynamic features.  

With the invention of Node.js, server-side scripting has been introduced that can communicate with a distributed server with ease. This can help to generate complete dynamic web solutions before returning it to a browser. This is therefore a major discovery in web development.

Node.js is asynchronous in behaviour that allows it to develop lightweight and efficient applications; it is a perfect match for a data-driven intensive real-time solution which runs across the distributed devices using event-driven, non-blocking I/O (input/output) approach.

As consumers’ demands are growing rapidly, it is essential to have a swift software development process that allows different businesses to share with a newbie consumer a distinct user experience. Node.js owns a distinct representation of “JavaScript everywhere paradigm” which allows Node.js developers to unify the web application development with a single programming language rather than using multiple languages for a server-side and client-side script. Node.js allows sharing a code between the browser and the backend. This is beneficial when you’d like to maintain a tenacious connection from the web browser to the respective server along with code reusability.

Moreover, Node.js comes with multiple API’s calls in real-time which is suitable for backend development that boost the application’s execution along with a single language for both the front-end and back-end deployment.

The Node.js community is growing rapidly, in fact, the Node.js tech-stack is free and widely available. Node.js is privileged on the most popular package library called NPM (Node Package Manager).  NPM is a package manager for the JavaScript programming language. It is the default package manager for the JavaScript runtime environment Node.js. NPM contains tons of libraries which can be downloaded on the basis of particular requirements with no cost with its registry that is massive and getting even larger.

The release of Node’s latest version 11.0, introduces extraordinary features such as reduced interval time, an addition of error-code, use of native node becoming stable, improvement in performance, better diagnosis and this makes the work of developers more enjoyable by deploying a great experience for their users.   

Facts about Node.js

• According to a survey, more than 82% responders indicated that they use Node.js for their web work and 43% of respondents indicated that they are using node for enterprise solutions
• Users span more than 85+ countries and speak more than 45 languages
• Weekly downloaded ratio: 24,630
• Most downloaded version: 6.1.1
• Approved license: ISC

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