Node.js was created by Ryan Dahl in 2009, and its main focus is on server-side scripting. This allows JavaScript to be used for application development and allows users to create event-driven servers instead of standard servers.
Node.js is a server-side platform built on Google Chrome's JavaScript Engine (V8 Engine). Node js can generate dynamic page content, and it can also collect form data. However, most importantly, Node can be used to develop server based applications. It's also used for networking applications and even as a system command interface!
Things that make Node.js great:
1. Asynchronous and Event Driven - All APIs of Node js library are asynchronous that is non-blocking. It essentially means a Node js based server never waits for an API to return data. The server moves to the next API after calling it and a notification mechanism of Events of Node js helps the server to get a response from the previous API call.
2. Very Fast - Being built on Google Chrome's V8 JavaScript Engine, Node js library is very fast in code execution.
3. Single Threaded but Highly Scalable - Node js uses a single threaded model with event loop
With the advent of Node.js in 2009, JavaScript has made its way to the back end. The main driver behind this is Node's single-threaded, non-blocking I/O nature that makes it lightweight and efficient, ideal for data-intensive real-time applications that run across distributed devices.
Here are five benefits of using Node.js over JavaScript:
Scalability
Node.js is built on Google Chrome's V8 JavaScript Engine, which makes it highly scalable. Its event looping, non-blocking I/O model makes it lightweight and efficient, and perfect for data-intensive real-time applications that run across distributed devices.
JavaScript
Node.js uses JavaScript on the server and that makes it easy to port over the code to the browser (making isomorphic apps possible). In addition to this, NPM — Node Package Manager — makes it easy to install and manage modules and packages written in JavaScript.
Real Time Web Apps
The event-driven nature of Node.js makes it a great choice for developing real time web apps like chats and games. It can also be used as a web server and supports multiple programming languages like Ruby, PHP and Python along with HTML5 Web Sockets.
Data Streaming Apps
Node.js is a runtime environment built on Chrome's V8 JavaScript engine. It can be used to build all kinds of server-side applications, but it is particularly well known for its real-time web applications.
It may come as a surprise that Node.js isn't actually JavaScript. JavaScript is just the language in which Node.js is written, and JavaScript is what developers use to write programs that run inside Node.js.
So why would you want to use Node.js instead of just writing your application in regular JavaScript? Here are our top five benefits of using Node.js over JavaScript:
Node.js helps you write large, scalable programs
JavaScript code can only be executed in one thread, so the more time-consuming the processing, the more likely it is that the program will crash or become unresponsive. This makes it difficult to write large applications using JavaScript.
With Node.js, however, each action you perform triggers an event . If these actions take some time to complete (e.g., accessing a database), they just create another event without interrupting execution of the rest of the program while they are taking place (this is called non-blocking).
This makes it possible to write complex programs with shorter