The actuality of Node.js for backend web development
Web development nowadays stands as a self-sufficient industry, and web projects are only gaining the demand day by day. Services, vendors and entrepreneurs, both big and small, establish their web presence to reach broad audience and enter the foreign market. But which technology would suit best for such projects?
Even though the demand is very high, unfortunately, there is no definitive technology sufficient for creating all kinds of web projects. The client side is mostly written in Javascript, you won’t have to think about it for too long. However, the choice is vast and it’s imperative when it comes to the server side. You have to choose backend technology wisely since it greatly affects the security, performance and functionality of a final product. Also, the development time and cost should be taken into consideration.
Today I’d like to make a brief review of Node.js, as an example. There are a lot of well-known frameworks for Javascript, like Angular and React. But Node.js differs as it’s not a framework, but a runtime environment which enables creating backend Javascript applications. It was built in 2009 based on Chrome’s V8 engine. Prior to the creation of Node, Javascript code could only be executed inside a browser. Taking it out of that shell has led to a lot of new opportunities for JS developers. Developers did take some time to appreciate this technology, but now it experiences quite a grow. At present there’s already a ton of packages in Node’s npm, and its community is only expanding.
What exactly attracts so many people to Node right now?
-First of all, Node lets you create backend in Javascript. It’s a powerful language to some extent familiar to nearly every web developer. That makes teamwork and code review easier. It’s generally more comfortable and clear when both frontend and backend are written in the same programming language.
-Asynchronous non-blocking I/O. A lot of server-side languages currently move towards applying this feature in one way or another. Why? This is basically the main thing that Node is beloved for. It dramatically increases the application performance by not blocking the core while it’s taking queries. The system doesn’t wait for a query to be processed before taking another one.
-Single-threaded nature is yet another thing worth mentioning. It makes Node.js applications lightweight, fast and efficient. It provides a lot of space for scalability by reducing RAM usage and the number of required hardware. There are tasks that require multiple cores, and a single-thread is not what you’d rather use to solve them. However, if a project doesn’t require heavy computations, you will get both speed boost and hardware economy by choosing Node.
-Speaking of the economy. Node.js turns Javascript frontend developers into full stack. It contributes both employer and employee. Developer gets a higher salary and is more appreciated as a team member. And HR or team lead doesn’t need to hire more developers for a project anymore. It’s debatable if a full stack developer can have a higher impact on a project than 2 separate developers do, but it’s going to be a worthy addition to a team, either way.
-Node.js is also quite timesaving in terms of the development process. It’s blazing fast when you need to create a small but very interactive website. Some of the tiny ones take less than an hour to create when a qualified developer or a team is concerned.
-But still, the main advantage of this technology comes from its runtime capabilities. Node shows itself best in an environment where immediate responses are highly required.
But there are also examples of the bad practice of using this technology. Though Node does a great job teaching JS how to operate with file systems, networks and child processes, it does have some issues with CPU-intensive computations. Without the multi-threaded option, heavy computations are slowing down the application thus reducing the overall performance. Such things are sure possible in Node, but you’d rather use a multi-threaded language for it.
Apart from the inappropriate use, it’s pretty hard to find a free hosting for Node. Most of the free and cheap ones are made for websites in Java, Python and PHP. But on the opposite side, Node has a huge open-source community with packages probably for any case possible. Not to say, this technology becomes an excessively powerful tool in the hands of a well-coordinated development team fully involved in the process.
As we see, Node has a lot of great features, but sometimes it just doesn’t suit the project. It is a brilliant technology by itself, that gives us the features some languages are still striving to implement.
It is said that behind every tool, there is a motive for its creation. That is also applied to programming. Different technologies are used best for different purposes.
So you should always take the functional needs of a given project into consideration. As for Node.js, it has shown itself to be quite powerful for data-intensive real-time applications. If you need to create a fast and responsive web app, maybe with live chats or shared data access, then Node is a great choice for you.
Another nice fact, already mentioned above, is that Node makes one-language full stack possible. This may be of a great use for smaller development companies. Despite Full stack developers are more expensive to hire, but it’s still much easier than searching for separate frontend and backend developers. Nevertheless you should always remember that Node is not a universal solution suitable for any kind of project. Furthemore, be cautious while outsourcing, because even though there might be plenty of Node.js developers, it is hard to find experienced and coordinated ones. Case studies, open-source projects, even the general reputation of people you hire, are the things that will help you to make the right choice.
So is Node worth applying to a project as a backend technology? Of course! But not in every case. You should still select wisely, or else you might lose time and money on a technology you don’t need. If you want to avoid this problem, try outsourcing. It will save you from a project-breaking mistake and spare you from hiring and learning routines. And if you are an aspiring developer, Node.js will sure be a valuable investment and interesting experience for you. So do at least try it out!
Top comments (0)