Starting at backend development [part 1]

Hello everyone, in this article I will introduce you to node.js development, focused on backend development.

In these series of articles we will be able to learn basic concepts that will let us achieve tasks as creating simple applications.

Let’s get started with a little introduction of node.js.

What is backend development?

Backend development refers to server-side development.
Web development is divided into two big concepts: frontend, and backend. To give you a general idea, frontend development is meant to be what we see when we visit a web page and it includes all graphical resources; on the other hand, backend development contains the business logic.

E.g. Login system from facebook, or uploading video process from Tiktok, the system that carries with all that logic is called backend.

Ready to go more deep in?

What is node.js?

Node.js is an Asynchronous event-driven Javascript runtime. But, what does it means? Well, let's go step by step.

1. Runtime? Mmm, what is it?
Runtime provides the environment in which programs run.
This environment may manage how the program uses the memory, or how it interacts with the operative system.

2. Asynchronous?
Normally, a given program's code runs straight along from top to bottom, running only one thing at once. Imagine you have a function that execute a process that takes time, your whole program will be stopped until your function finishes its process.

This isn't very useful because the user will have to wait a lot of time! and your program may crash if there are many people requesting something at the same time.

So, how can we avoid that? Asynchronous programming is the answer!

3. Event-driven
Is a programming paradigm in which the flow is determined by events, such a user interaction (like clicks), sensors, HTTP methods, etc.
There's a main loop that listen to an event, and then triggers a callback to handle it.

We will discuss these topics deeper afterwards, for now it is enough for us to know them in general terms.

In the next chapter we're going to learn more about node.js in web development, its use and its potential as Javascript technology.

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