NodeJS: Intro, Purpose, Pros and Cons and more | Enorness

JavaScript has always been one of the most popular client-side programming languages but it never provided a backend platform. However, in recent times, JavaScript has started to evolve and gained application in different areas. Such as React Native, Appcelerator Titanium, Apache Cordova/ PhoneGap, NativeScript, and Node.js. 

Today, we are going to discuss NodeJS as it is the first viable alternative that appeals to those looking to unify their programming language.

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What is NodeJS

NodeJS is not a framework, library, or programming language; instead, it is a runtime environment that has been based on the Google V8 engine written in C++ and it allows you to execute the code on the server side, either frontend or backend. 

Although Ryan Dahl initially developed it in 2009, it only recently gained widespread popularity, with its adoption gradually increasing over time as an enterprise-level tool. Currently, top businesses around the globe like Walmart, Netflix, Medium, Uber, LinkedIn, Groupon, and even NASA are also using NodeJS.

Purpose of NodeJS

Ryan Dahl was inspired by Gmail to create functionality for real-time websites to have push capability. Ryan wanted to help developers and build a tool that was non-blocking and event-driven, which resulted in real-time possibilities.

To summarize the functionality of NodeJS, its main benefit is that it offers speed in data processing, client-server interaction, development, and progression. Node.js enables event-driven, bidirectional communication between the client and server, allowing both sides to initiate interactions and share data seamlessly.

NodeJS excels at the sort of scalable and real-time situation that we are increasingly asking of our web servers, thanks to its unique I/O model.

This approach addresses a unique market need. Unlike other methods that create a new thread for each incoming request, Node.js operates on a single-threaded event loop with non-blocking I/O calls. This design conserves RAM while efficiently handling thousands of simultaneous connections.

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Pros of Using NodeJS in Backend Development

NodeJs have been quite in demand in recent times because of the benefits that they offer. Following are the pros of NodeJS

Cross-Functional Teams 

JS is one of the most popular programming languages for front-end development. According to the survey conducted by Stack Overflow, the nodeJS tool the 6th spot.

Most of the frontend developers are familiar with JavaScript which allows them to easily switch and use NodeJS at the backend. In turn, less effort and time are required to learn nodeJS even junior JS developers can easily learn and transform them into nodeJS developers. 

In the cross-functional team, you’ll have a whole range of experts able to work seamlessly with each other. Moreover, every participant can write the code, debug it, deploy and maintain it. overall, if we look from a wider perspective, it results in a more agile and innovative team.

Full Freedom in Cross-Platform Applications

ROR (Ruby on Rails) has good popularity with its rules and guidelines for developing software in a particular way. NodeJS allows you a ton of customization and lets you do things the way you want them. NodeJS showcases an unbiased behavior means you can develop for Windows, Linux, and MacOS from scratch while being on the specific OS. 

Moreover, nodeJS developers can easily work on web and desktop apps without having expert knowledge of additional programming languages. In addition, backend developers can make use of tools such as the Google Chrome Developer Tools.

Scalability

One of the major benefits of NodeJS is the scalability of its environment. Your nodeJS system will be lightweight and fast from the get-go and has the potential to add additional modules easily at a later date. 

Node.js makes it easy to build applications that can scale alongside business growth, leveraging its straightforward single-thread event loop and capacity for managing numerous concurrent connections.

As applications increase in complexity, Node.js supports both vertical and horizontal scaling, with Cluster modules available to distribute the load efficiently across multiple CPUs.

Highly Large and Active Community

The NodeJS community is wide and has dedicated members who are always available to add new features to the NodeJS and fix bugs as well. Moreover, with the input of JavaScript developers, you can get access to countless ready solutions, codes in GitHub, and more. Consequently, the volume of StackOverflow questions is steadily growing, continually enriching the knowledge base around this technology.

NPM

NPM works the same way as ruby gem works and provides users with a set of components that are readily and publicly available for use to help solve common issues and provide an enhanced NodeJS user experience. To date, the number of modules available is more than a million created by third-party developers globally.

The NPM CLI tool is installed automatically with Node.js, ensuring easy access to its repository for users. If you discover a valuable solution to a problem, you can also contribute by sharing your module on NPM.

For larger organizations seeking enhanced security, NPM offers an Enterprise version that can operate behind a company’s firewall. This version provides access to a private registry equipped with advanced security features to identify vulnerabilities and unsafe code.

Simultaneous Request Handling

Node.js features a non-blocking I/O system that enables the concurrent processing of multiple requests. Its ability to manage simultaneous connections significantly outperforms that of Python or Ruby. Node.js can efficiently handle many requests at low response times and facilitates the sharing of validation codes between the client and web server. This makes it an excellent choice for modern web applications that rely heavily on client-side processing.

Incoming requests are queued and executed rapidly in sequence, allowing your application to use less system RAM, scale effortlessly, and operate more quickly.

However, it’s essential to recognize that Node.js is less efficient when dealing with heavy CPU processing, as intensive calculations can block the thread. Workarounds like Node.js Worker Threads (introduced in version 10.5.0) can help mitigate this issue. Consequently, Node.js remains popular for single-page applications, where rendering occurs on the client side and the backend mainly provides a JSON API.

If your primary task involves transferring data, Node.js can be highly efficient. A single instance can handle significantly more requests on the same hardware compared to traditional “thick” application servers, like those used with Rails.

Cons of Using NodeJS

Following are the cons of nodejs that you can experience while working with node.

Inconsistent API

One of the biggest cons of NodeJS is its consistency. NodeJS API changes frequently and the changes are backward most of the time. When this happens, programmers are forced to make changes to the existing code base to make it compatible with the latest version.

More Development Time

As discussed above NodeJS is an unbiased environment that allows you to develop for every platform but it can also considered as a drawback since you have to write everything from scratch and you don’t have any guidelines, unlike ROR.

Not a Good Option for Heavy Applications

As mentioned earlier, Node.js currently does not support multi-threaded programming. While it can handle more complex applications than Ruby, it is not designed for long-running calculations. Heavy computations can block incoming requests, undermining one of Node.js’s key advantages.

Node.js excels in lightweight yet complex applications, but when it comes to software that requires significant computing power, it may not perform as well as traditional methods. To mitigate the risk of severe crashes due to exceptions on the single thread, you can incorporate modules like ‘forever’ into your Node.js framework.

System Crashing

When it comes to exception finding its way into the core of the event loop, the entire program can crash without the prospect of being able to recover the state of the user session before the crash. External systems can be used to tackle this issue, or, as mentioned above, modules like ‘forever’ can be used to set up callback parameters that will pass the error back to the caller.

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Conclusion

NodeJS is a fast-developing and promising environment that is set to solve and diminish many of the development hurdles that your app team may face. It provides a perfect mixture of performance, speed, and size enabling use cases from beginner level to web projects. Therefore, opting for NodeJS in 2024 is a good choice for your next project.