Node.js features, uses, advantages and disadvantages

Node is the server that can execute JavaScript. It is an open source, cross platform to make real-time network applications. It offers asynchronous and event-driven I/O APIs. When it runs single single-threaded event-based loop, all the executions become non-blocking.

Node.js

Node does not deal with PHP, .NET, or JAVA. It is not a framework; It is a server, such as Apache, IIS, TOM etc, It executes JavaScript on the server side. JavaScript without the browser is Node.js. Node itself is not made in JavaScript completely, but its wrappers are made in C, and it just executes JavaScript.

Although there are drawbacks of using Node.js, Many features of it will help in creating a wide range of networking and server-side applications in JavaScript. Node.js is the most common and widely used server-side framework for small, large, and any-sized web apps and web application development.

JavaScript is more popular than other client-side programming languages. As a cross-platform run-time environment, Node.js enables developers to run JavaScript on web servers, but Node.js is different from other commonly used JavaScript frameworks. It interprets the JavaScript code through Google’s V8 JavaScript engine.

Node.js advantages

You can use a Single Programming Language. Node.js enables developers to write server-side applications in JavaScript, so, developers can use the run-time environment to write the front-end and back-end of the web application in JavaScript, without using any server-side programming language.

As JavaScript is supported by each of the web browsers and the server, it becomes easier for businesses to deploy their web applications more effectively. Node.js is easy to learn, so, the basic Java programmer will find it easy to upgrade to it. It uses JavaScript as a programming language, which increases programmer productivity & code reusability.

The synchronization process is better and quicker. The asynchronous event-driven IO assists concurrent request handling. The community is very active and vibrant with several codes shared by GitHub, etc, Node is not multi-threaded; It runs in a single thread with the callback concept. It’s not for JavaScript beginners as it is very low-level.

As it’s a single-threaded program, it offers many options for having a good grip over run-time executions, such as callback methods & event loops. Node package modules (npm) have already increased in size, and it is still growing. Streaming big files is possible with Node.js.

Node.js is open source, so it is free to use, and you can extend it as per your needs. There is no need to pay for a license, and there are many open source modules supported by Node.js. The event-driven architecture of Node.js is appropriate for real-time applications, especially chat applications and games.

You can scale your Node.js application by using two ways the Horizontal Scaling and Vertical Scaling. This helps you to improve your application performance. In Horizontal scaling, you can add more nodes to your existing system, and in Vertical scaling, you can add more resources to a single node.

Node.js is easy to scale. The developers have the option to scale the Node.js applications by using two ways, which are Horizontal Scaling and Vertical Scaling, that help the developers to improve their application performance.

The developers can add extra nodes to their existing system in Horizontal scaling, and they can add more resources to a single node in Vertical scaling. These options make Node.js more scalable than other JavaScript frameworks available in the market.

Node.js delivers improved performance. It executes JavaScript code through Google’s V8 JavaScript engine. The engine compiles the code written in JavaScript into the machine code directly, so, this code is executed in a faster and efficient way. The run-time environment increases the code execution speed by supporting non-blocking I/O operations.

Node.js is highly extensible, It is based on JavaScript that can be executed on the client side as well as the server side, Its open source nature makes it easier for the programmers to customize and extend Node.js, It supports exchange of data between the web server & the client by using JSON that is consumed by JavaScript easily, This makes it light weight as compared to the other frameworks.

Node.js offers a wide community of developers around the world. They are active in the development of new modules or packages to support different types of application development. PayPal reported a 2 times increase in developer productivity after using Node.js.

Node.js supports caching of modules. Each time a module is requested for the first time, it is cached in the application memory. The application can load the cached modules quickly without requiring the module code to be re-executed. The caching feature enables the application to load the web pages & respond to the user requests more quickly.

When you use Node.js, you can develop a RESTful service API easily. Despite being lightweight, Node.js offers some built-in APIs that help you to create different types of Servers like HTTP Server, DNS Server, TCP Server etc., and Node.js helps the developers to take advantage of many commonly used tools.

Node.js supports unit testing out of the box. The developers can test the source code of a Node.js application by using Jasmin and JavaScript unit testing frameworks. They specify and install the project dependencies more efficiently by taking advantage of robust package manager like npm. They have the option to use Grunt as an efficient task runner for the project.

Node.js can facilitate Real-Time Application Development. It is used by JavaScript developers for building real-time and multi-user applications such as games and chats, The run-time environment uses web-sockets to simplify and speed up bidirectional communication between the web server & client. As web-sockets run on TCP, the overhead on HTTP remains unchanged.

Node.js disadvantages

Node.js isn’t consistent. It does not support relational databases. Using it is difficult for programmers for highly intensive computational tasks. It is important to use the callback to end up every time with the bulk of nested callbacks.

Many programmers complain that Node.js API (Application Programming Interface) keeps changing at frequent intervals. The new API comes with several backwards-incompatible changes, so, it is important for programmers to make the changes to the existing code base to make it compatible with the latest version of Node.js API.

The asynchronous programming approach is important if we want to enhance Node.js scalability. The developers have a split opinion on this, as this approach is quite complex than the linear blocking I/O programming, and it makes the code messy.

JavaScript does not have a strong standard library, unlike other modern programming languages. The users do not have any option to avail popular libraries for image processing, object-relational mapping (ORM), database operations, and XML parsing.

Many developers find the available JavaScript to be unstable and inadequate. So, the developers find it difficult to accomplish popular programming tasks while using Node.js. If Node.js executes a long-running task, it does not support very high intensive tasks. It will queue all the incoming requests to wait for execution. It follows the JavaScript event loop that is single-threaded.

Node.js at present, isn’t supportive to both multi-threaded programming, So, It is unsuitable for large and complicated web applications, It doesn’t support multi-threaded programming. Node is good for executing synchronous and CPU-intensive tasks.

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