If one of your habits is staying abreast of the latest tech and programming news you might have probably heard the Node.js term quite often. However, if you’re a web developer then you have definitely not just heard it, but almost surely have leveraged all the fantastic Node.js capabilities for your web development projects. While programmers are usually well versed in all things web development those who specialize in other fields of life need a quick yet professional glance at the matter. So what’s the magic behind the technology that Node.js developers use?
In this article we’ll cover the hottest Node.js topic from a business owner’s perspective. Which benefits using the given technology are there for a business in comparison to others? Also we will give an answer to the question why business owners should consider hiring Node.js developers in 2017. Sounds interesting? Keep on reading to find out more.
What is Node.js
Node.js is an open-source runtime environment for building real-time, scalable network web applications using JavaScript server-side scripting. To a non-techy this definition may seem quite difficult to understand, so let’s try to explain it a bit.
Websites you visit online are mainly built using JavaScript and PHP. Both languages are not new, however, it is the development of their libraries and frameworks that has pushed the progress further. Earlier JavaScript was used only for front-end web development, while PHP was the only language to develop the server-side computation.
Now with the creation of Node.js it’s possible to run JavaScript on server too. As a result, only one language is used throughout the whole web application development – JavaScript. This makes it much easier and faster for developers to create dynamic web-based apps. So using Node.js there’re no barriers now for programmers between back-end and front-end development.
Node.js vs PHP: What’s The Difference?
The main differences between Node.js and PHP lie in the field of performance.
Node.js executes code using Google V8 JavaScript Engine and JIT (Just-In-Time) compilation. This means that code execution is much more optimized in comparison to PHP, which uses interpreted compilation for its Zend runtime standard.
Also it’s important to mention that Node.js handles multitasking more efficiently than PHP. It executes tasks in parallel with callbacks for signalling a completion of a task. PHP, on the other hand, executes commands one after another, so only after a completion of the previous task a new task is being executed.
Although NGINX and Apache are able to slightly enhance multitasking in PHP, those ways of improvement they offer can not compare to the support of multitasking by true language.
In regards to the performance benchmarks such as simple HTTP requests, bubble-sort-job test and CombSort benchmark Node.js has drastically better results than PHP.
Node.js Benefits
The first and foremost advantage of using Node.js is that it’s JavaScript. As we have already mentioned it’s very good to have a single programming language used for both front-end and back-end development.
Another major benefit that Node.js offers is its open-source nature. The community of Node.js developers continuously delivers new improvements and additional modules for Node.js solutions. So this makes it even a more attractive platform to use for fast apps development to many programmers worldwide.
Asynchronous execution of operations with the help of the Event Loop adds up to the benefits of Node.js. With the help of events and callback functions this asynchronicity is being supported. As a result all this allows to maintain concurrency.
One of the most important advantages of using Node.js is that it perfectly fits for development of all kinds of real-time apps, e g chats, gaming apps etc. So if you consider creating a web-based, event-driven real-time application for your business then Node.js is the technology you need.
The last but not the least benefit that Node.js possesses is that it’s exceptionally fast. The platform is able to actually speed up any framework used in the app thanks to the V8 Engine written in JavaScript.
Node.js Best Practices
Node.js platform has seen many implementations since 2009 when it was introduced by its creator Ryan Dahl. To give you some examples of Node-using services think just about such famous services as Linkedin and PayPal. Popular websites including Flickr.com, WSJ.com, Coursera.org, Alexa.com, SpeedTest.net, Vice.com and many other also use Node.js.
Speaking about the best practices of using Node.js in applications, there are a few examples which we would like to highlight in particular.
Uber
Uber, a leader in on-demand delivery mobile apps, is written in loads of Node.js and Python. Particularly Node.js was put into full production at Uber to ensure reliability of the quickly scaling system that matches riders with drivers. This technology perfectly helps to fulfill the ultimate goal of the Uber company: to provide the service, which is like running water; by turning on the faucet you immediately get the water.
The use of Node.js is confirmed by Uber Senior Staff Engineer Matt Ranney who thinks that Node.js is an ideal fit for running in production. Mr. Ranney emphasizes the unique Node.js capability that allows programmers to deploy new code, while simultaneously fix any errors that this new code may create, without actually having to restart any processes in the programs.
Netflix
Providing high-quality on-demand online video streaming services to customers worldwide Netflix continuously scales up its platform with the help of Node.js. The majority of the UI at Netflix is written in JavaScript, so when the team of engineers decided to leverage Node.js to do all the UI work in a single language there was a little hesitation. Another major Node.j advantage that Netflix enjoy is much faster build times. So now Netflix Node.js developers are able to move in their day-to-day work as quickly as they want.
Node.js has proven its effectiveness and reliability to Netflix, so the service provider works on expanding the use of the technology to unique Node.js apps that satisfy the demands of particular customers. So as you see Netflix has a long way to go hand in hand with Node.js.
eBay
Speaking about one of the world’s biggest online marketplaces, eBay leverages Node.js for their whole front-end web development, as well as for back-end processes. Among the benefits that eBay gets from using Node.js, as eBay Engineer Senthil Padmanabhan states, is that many developers today choose JavaScript, so there’s no problem for them to work with Node.js whatsoever. Besides that Node.js provides very easy distributing and sharing capabilities, which makes it convenient for the eBay engineering team to reuse common components whenever they need to.
Initially having started small with Node.js, now eBay has grown to use all the scaling, real-time capabilities of Node.js both for front-end and back-end stacks. So Node.js developers at eBay are there to stay for long too.
DriverAgent
DriverAgent is an example of the desktop utility app that beautifully leverages Node.js. This utility app scans all computer devices and offers drivers for them to update. Scanning, searching and updates are all done in real-time automatically, so no need for customers to surf for driver updates anywhere on the web manually.
In regards to the Node.js use in DriverAgent, the app benefits particularly from the use of PhantomJS module. It’s basically a headless browser, which allows the DriverAgent to crawl the AMD.com web pages and get all the needed drivers’ download links. This Node.js crawler was developed by Adoriasoft.
Although DriverAgent is written in PHP we have decided to utilize PhantomJS and not PHP for the crawler for a number of reasons. Firstly, PHP allows just to download web pages and work with their content as with text only, while PhantomJS lets us actually execute JavaScript on those web pages. This is very important, because otherwise we had to emulate some functions executed by JavaScript to PHP. That’s not always that easy, so PhantomJS simplifies the whole thing here. Another reason for us to use PhantomJS instead of PHP is that it can be used for execution of code together with other JavaScript libraries, such as jQuery.
So wrapping up you can see that Node.js can be used for solving effectively both large-scale and small tasks. All just depends on the needs of a given business and the problems that developers must solve for that business to achieve its goals.
Node.js Developers On Your Team
If you have an idea to start a business, which will include real-time customer requests, supply and demand functions, non-stop reliable system functioning, which in addition must be scaled further then Node.js is the right choice of the technology. That’s why if you’re thinking of the mobile app or web app of the lightning speed and perfect user experience, then Node.js developers are those you definitely need on your team.
Adoriasoft offers outstaffing of professional and experienced Node.js developers for your project. We are able to provide top-notch A to Z mobile app development and web development services. Also our team is ready to create only a part of the functionality if your business requires it. Drop us a line describing your business needs and we’ll provide a free estimate for your project!