Why you should choose Node.js for developing server-side applications

How is Node good compared to other server-side scripting technologies?

At the heart of how Node works.js is asynchronous. In addition to non-blocking I / O, this allows a server-side application on Node.js can handle much more client requests per unit of time than a similar application developed on most other server-side development technologies.

What does this mean for your business?

• You can start your own project with relatively low costs for the server infrastructure.
• With the right architecture, this allows you to scale your business without investing a lot of money.

What does this mean for developers?

• If you don't have an understanding of asynchronous code and experience working with it, it will be very difficult at first. It is difficult to understand that some instruction written "upstream" may be executed much later than the subsequent ones, or it may not be executed at all. You will need to thoroughly study the concepts of callbacks, promises, async-await wrappers over promises, synchronous and asynchronous generators, and iterators. But it is very well structured thinking, allows you to take a different look at the program execution process and understand how much time a "normal" - synchronous-program wastes during waiting periods, and also learn how to save this time.
• A good understanding of asynchronous development approaches greatly increases the value of a specialist in the labor market and, accordingly, allows you to qualify for a higher salary.

Node allows you to quickly develop an MVP. Node has already developed a large number of packages with various functions. You don't have to spend time developing the basic functionality, but just focus on the business logic.

What does this mean for your business?

• The new product will be brought to the market faster (TTM will decrease).
• Less money will be spent on the development process, as it will take less developer hours to create the first version of the product.
• Hypotheses formed during the initial market research will be tested faster, product adjustments will be made faster, and funds will eventually be turned around faster. This is a very important characteristic for project investors.

What does this mean for developers?

• You don't have to reinvent the wheel on every project, which inevitably causes a lot of mistakes and makes the work boring, but you can work closely on tasks that are important for the project.
• Greater freedom in choosing an approach, building an architecture, and finalizing standard functionality that does not meet the requirements of the architect and/or customer.
• Node is built on the basis of the JavaScript language. As a result, this significantly increases the likelihood of developing full-stack specialists in the development team: front-enders who are well versed in the backend, or backenders who are well versed in the frontend.

Node.js is very closely related to JavaScript, the syntax and architectural approaches are identical, only the "bindings" (browser and server) differ.

What does this mean for your business?

• The development team will include specialists with a broader view of the problem, which means that the burden on management will be reduced.
• The development process will be more efficient, because it is always easier and faster for a person (a full-stack developer) to negotiate with themselves than with another person. This reduces the cost of communication between specialists.
• There will be fewer errors in the development process, because floating bugs often occur at the intersection of different development technologies with different data types.

What does this mean for developers?

• If you had to work closely with the front-end before, then you have a good understanding of the processes that occur with data in the user part of the resource, and, as a result, a simpler dialogue with front-end users.
• A good full-stack specialist is often more valued in the market than a good backend or frontend developer
• If you have enough time allocated for the development of the project, you can independently create both the front and back, thereby avoiding a huge number of "collisions", which often take a lot of time to solve.

Naturally, like any other technology, Node has its drawbacks.

What are Node's weaknesses?

• Node works very quickly with a large number of lightweight queries (such as those that do not require long data processing, complex calculations, etc.), but its performance significantly decreases if the requests require large server resources.
• The language and its execution machine are very actively developed, and sometimes it happens that individual packages are incompatible with each other or with the current version of the platform, which can lead to a complete failure of the project when updating the "engine" or a separate package.

Often, these shortcomings are used by opponents of Node in order to explain the reluctance to use it in production. Moreover, in confirmation of the first drawback, it is often stated that Node is single-threaded, so you can't write serious applications on it. At the current stage of technology development, this is completely wrong. First, there has long been an approach that runs multiple instances of the application and uses the Nginx web server as a load balancer. Secondly, in modern versions of Node, there is a built-in ability to create clusters of single-threaded processes, as well as special utilities for load balancing, automatic restart of processes, control over memory usage, etc.

The second disadvantage of Node is quite easy to compensate for. First, never specify the package version in the "latest" format, but specify the exact version of the package that the system is guaranteed to be compatible with. Second, to avoid losing access to the exact versions of packages in the public register, create copies of them in the local register. Third, do not update the platform or package versions in the production environment without first testing this bundle in the development environment (the statement is obvious, but it is often ignored).

will not be able to" overclock " Node in resource-intensive operations. But there is a solution: transfer operations that create a high hardware load to individual system components that are not written on Node, often even located on separate physical or virtual machines. There are various options for implementing this solution: microservice architecture, connecting modules written in other programming languages, etc.

As technologies that allow you to implement high-performance functionality, it is convenient to use: Rust, Go, C++.

Where is it convenient to use Node?

The technology is perfect for most projects implemented in the modern world of web development. The founders of almost any project at the start dream of having their product used by as many people as possible. Sample projects:

• online stores;
• video and audio hosting services;
• instant messengers;
• social network;
• any b2c products.

For all these directions, Node allows you to implement, as mentioned above, a quick start, and then fast, relatively inexpensive horizontal scaling.

Projects on Node

During the year leading up to writing this article, we applied technology to develop resources from scratch such as:

• freelance exchange;
• spare parts marketplace;
• realtime auction (API for the mobile app and web version);
• interactive system for creating media materials for - social networks;
• system for organising e-mail newsletters;
• assistant to the inspector of retail enterprises (API for the mobile app);
• patient assistant (API for the mobile app).