7 Key Node.js Advantages to Develop Scalable Web Apps

Over the years, Node.js has become the go-to technology for building scalable web applications. It has gained enormous popularity amongst developers due to the many significant benefits it offers. With the support of an enthusiastic community, node.js is standing firm with a 51.9% stake as the most popular web framework, according to Stack Overflow’s 2020 Developer Survey. 

Looking at the rising trend, we are debunking some of the top advantages which make Node.js a popular development choice in 2020.

Node.js Advantages:

Node.js Offers High-Performance for Real-time Applications

Web applications powered by Node.js benefit massively from its ability to multitask. Unlike other platforms, its single-threaded, event-driven architecture processes multiple concurrent requests efficiently without clogging the RAM. Moreover, its event-loop and non-blocking I/O operations allow code execution at a pace which significantly impacts the application’s overall performance.

Node.js helped GoDaddy outperform its competition. While driving the SuperBowl ad campaign, the web hosting company was able to handle 10,000 requests per second with absolutely no downtime, utilizing only 10% hardware, all thanks to Node.js.

What fuels Node.js with this superpower is that it’s built on Google Chrome’s V8 engine and written in C++. It breaks Javascript functions into machine codes with high efficiency and speed. It matters because Google invests heavily in its engine to improve performance, security, and provide excellent support for modern JavaScript features. Which directly impacts V8’s performance and, eventually, Node.js.

To ensure continuous advancements, Google has introduced the V8 benchmark suite to elevate Node.js’ performance with faster execution, better compilers, security patchworks, and ability to scale. 

Node.js offers Easy Scalability for Modern Applications

With a consistently growing consumer base of tens of millions of users, titans like Netflix, Walmart, Uber, Paypal, among others, have regarded Node.js as a viable solution for scalability.

The cutting-edge technology comes with tons of features like the cluster module. It facilitates load balancing over multiple CPU cores, making it easy to deliver desired outcomes through smaller modules without burning out the RAM process. Additionally, Node.js employs a non-blocking event-loop mechanism with high scalability and enables the server to process requests seamlessly.

From the development standpoint, Node.js allows you to leverage Microservices that further lets you segregate your application into smaller parts. This way, you get to define tasks and allocate them efficiently among different teams to fast-track development, deployment, and maintenance of each division of your application. Node.js and Microservic allow modern applications to scale up and down as per need and help companies achieve high performance with fewer resources.

Walmart benefited enormously by replacing its former legacy system with the deadly combination– microservices architecture and Node.js. The retail giant saw an instant growth of 20% in overall conversions and a 98% boost in mobile conversion. What’s more, they end up saving 40% of the computing power, but they also cut costs by a whopping 20-50%.

Node.js Offers Vibrant Community Support 

With millions of developers contributing actively to the Node.js community, you can expect extensive support from development experts to solve even the most peculiar development problems.

NPM, a package manager for JavaScript, is the biggest package manager registry in the world. It offers numerous tools and libraries available readily for you to use in your project. You’ll also find a large pool of resources – ready-to-use solutions, codes, modules, libraries, and registries – on GitHub built by developers to help you achieve more with limited resources.

This ever-evolving technology is being deeply supported by IBM, who has expressed its plans to sponsor and speak at key Node events to drive and mature in the project. In addition to this, they also wish to push for open governance in the merger of Node.js and JS Foundations, which they think will result in a more robust, more vibrant JavaScript ecosystem.

The vibrant community is backed up by many leading tech giants such as Amazon, Google, Facebook, and Netflix. They have made notable contributions in the form of many open source solutions. Acceptance by tech giants, alongside the developer’s community, ensures tech presence and growth in the foreseeable future.

Node.js is Easy to Learn and Quick to Adapt

It is undisputed that javascript is one of the most popular and widely used programming languages in the developer’s community. It is a lot easier to adapt and learn Node.js for web application development. It takes less time to write codes. 

According to Node.js 2016 User Survey, Javascript is one of the most well-liked programming languages for front-end development. It’s almost like it is a universal programming language. It requires less time and effort to learn and work with Node.js, even if it is just a beginner or a junior developer. 

As per a recent StackOverflow survey, 49,9% of the professional developers, elected Node.js as the most commonly used technology. 

Node.js Offers Extensibility to Meet Customized Requirements

Businesses never cease to evolve. So whether you’ve had a spike in your user base or you’re planning to explore other industry dimensions, Node.js can be easily extended and customized for rapidly growing enterprises. Node.js can be extended by leveraging built-in API for developing HTTP and DNS servers and JSON, a data format, which makes data exchange between client and web servers extremely easy.

PayPal had a phenomenal 2013 with a yearly payment volume of $451 billion and over 244 million active users globally. It was then when the payment titan replaced Java with JavaScript and Node.js. The astonishing outcome to this was a 200ms faster page response time and multiplied the number of requests they were empowered to handle per second.

Node.js Reduces Loading Time by Quick Caching

Node.js has made it easy for developers to reduce task workload and re-execution of code with its caching module. Every time the first module of your web application gets a request, it gets cached in the in-app memory. This way, within a fraction of microseconds, your users get to quickly access the web pages without having to wait for too long. 

 eBay was quick to add Node.js to their tech stack, for they wanted their application to be super-efficient and as real-time as possible to manage live connections with the server. Node.js proved to be the perfect resolution that helped them cater to an enormous number of data to display in microseconds.

Node.js Gives Freedom to Build Cross-Platform Applications

With Node.js, you can leverage platforms like Electron and NW.js to build cross-platform real-time web applications. You no longer need to invest time behind writing separate codes for various desktop versions – Windows, Linux, and macOS.

Going forward, your development team can build native desktop applications without expert-level knowledge in Objective-C, C#, or any other languages. Additionally, your Node.js developers can access more tools from Google Chrome Developer Tools to build, debug, and write codes without limitations.

This highly effective approach plays a vital role in web development around Javascript frameworks like AnjularJS, Vue.js, and React for front-end and Node.js for the backend. It has allowed full-stack developers to explore the exciting possibilities Node.js has to offer.

Conclusion

Node.js advantages have earned itself an impressive reputation. Leading companies like Paypal, Netflix, Walmart have embraced Node.js in production to achieve scalability and high performance. If you are thinking of developing a high performing web application, then all the advantages mentioned in this blog will come handy in ensuring project success.