What is Node.JS | Pros and Cons of Node JS

What is Node.js

Node.js is a run-time environment of JavaScript that runs the server-side JavaScript codes. In short, we can say that Node.js extends the range of JavaScript applications from client-side to server-side. The main focus of Node.js is to design real-time applications with the help of its asynchronous behavior and event-driven approach.

Key features of Node.js

The following are some unbeatable features of Node.js that make it distinct from other programming languages.

• Open source technology
• Highly scalable
• Easy and Fast
• Single-Threaded & Asynchronous
• Cross-Platform support
• Non-Blocking Thread Execution

Types of applications you create in Node.js

Node.js is best suited to create the following types of applications

• I/O Bound Applications
• Data Streaming Applications
• JSON APIs based Applications
• Data-Intensive Real-Time (DIRT) Applications
• Single Page Application

Pros and Cons of Node.js

Pros of Node JS

• Easy scalability: The utmost advantage is that it provides developers with a simple way to scale the applications in horizontal as well as in the vertical directional. You can easily scale a horizontal manner by adding an extra node to the system and vertical manner by adding the optional resources to the single nodes. So, it is highly scalable and therefore developers find it better than the other servers
• Fast and event-based: Synchronization is very fast when you are using a common language on both sides (server-side and client-side) which is useful for event-based applications. It is all due to its asynchronous, non-blocking, single-threaded nature that many companies migrated their previous technologies to develop Node.js applications.
• Real-time applications: NodeJS is quite famous for the event-driven approach, so it is widely used for real-time applications. It is quite popular for online gaming, video conferences, chats or any solution that requires constantly updated data. So, you can see the examples speak by themselves.
• Large community support: One of the most astonishing features of the Node.js is that it is blessed with a large community. The developers are active all the time who always ready to contribute toward the development and growth of the Node.js. Indeed, developers are fully supported by the JavaScript proved easy and ready-made solutions and GitHub codes. It may be possible that the developers will influence many more developers in the nearby future.
• Rich ecosystem: The default package manager of the Node.js is NPM which plays a vital role in the advancement of the technology. NPM works as a marketplace for open-source JavaScript tools. There are almost 350,000 tools are available in the NPM registry by now. Not only this, more than 10,000 new ones being published every week. So, you can see at the time of you are reading this a lot of tools have already been added.

Cons of NodeJs

• Application Programming Interface (API) is Not Stable

  It is one of the key problems of Node.js is that its API is not stable. Most of the developers find that in every interval of time API keeps on changing. From time to time, a new API shown which have a lot of backward-incompatible changes. Therefore, developers have to make changes in the accessible code bases so that they can match the compatibility with the latest version.

• Asynchronous Programming Model

  Another drawback of the asynchronous programming is that the codes tend to become clumsy It is necessary to adopt the asynchronous programming model to make the application more scalable. But many developers find it very difficult in comparison with the linear blocking I/O programming.

• Incapable of handling CPU-intensive apps

  As Node.js is an event-based and a single-threaded environment, it is not efficient to handle CPU- intensive apps. Some of the requests that Node.js is not capable of handling are generating audio, video, or editing graphics.

Node.js Vs PHP

Node.js	PHP
Node.js is a JavaScript framework.	PHP is a server-side scripting language.
Node.js is powered by the Google V8 JavaScript engine.	PHP is powered by the Zend engine.
It is the server-side runtime environment of JavaScript.	PHP has a ready to install feature to use it on the server-side
Node.js is asynchronous PHP is synchronous. Node.js is not much complex to use but more than PHP due to more lines of coding.	PHP is much simpler to use in contrast with NodeJS
Node.js is fast and lightweight in comparison to PHP	PHP is slower than Node.js
It has a Node Package Manager to use.	It mainly uses the Composer Package manager.