Top 5 Benefits of Using Node.JS

Node.js is an open-source, cross-platform, light-weight run-time environment that executes JavaScript code on the server-side of an application. It builds event-based, real-time applications, mainly web servers that constantly handle dynamic data.

Let’s take a look at some of the advantages of using Node.js.

1. Single Programming Language

The basic identity of Node.js revolves around the usage of a single programming language – JavaScript – for scripting both the front-end (client-side) and the back-end (server-side) of the application.

This ensures efficient code-reuse, robust performance, improved developer productivity and saves time and costs.

2. Superior Performance

Node.js has an event-driven architecture that follows asynchronous processing i.e. non-blocking I/O, wherein multiple requests are handled concurrently. There’s only a single thread – an event loop – that uses callbacks to indicate task completion.

This results in faster data processing and shorter response time and is highly beneficial for event-based software like gaming and payment apps, video streaming platforms, etc.

Moreover, Node.js is built on Chrome’s V8 engine – so, high performance is guaranteed.

3. High Scalability

Node.js and Microservices architecture is an ideal combination. Microservices is a software development technique that breaks down a single application into smaller, functional services, each running and communicating independently.

When Node.js combines with microservices, it becomes easy to include additional functional units on top of the existing ones, as Node.js handles requests simultaneously, thereby ensuring flexibility for developers.

4. Smooth Extensibility

Node.js can be easily integrated with many tools. For example, it can be extended to work with Jasmine, a unit testing framework. Similarly, it can also work with Express, Meteor, Koa, Hapi, etc. It also facilitates development of DNS and HTTP servers using in-built APIs.

5. Abundant Tools & Resources

The main source of Node.js tools and resources is the npm (Node Package Manager), a default, open source package manager written in JavaScript.

With a vast repository of over 836,000 libraries, npm helps developers in easy installation, sharing, running, updating and management of JavaScript packages.

Node.js has many big users like IBM, Microsoft, LinkedIn, Netflix, PayPal, Walmart, etc. The popularity of Node.js is increasing day-by-day with many organizations adopting it to achieve their business goals.