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Node.Js is an open-source platform for building fast, easy, and scalable network applications. It is used extensively by developers worldwide for back-end development. According to ‘Stack Overflow Research’ Node.js is a market leader among all the frameworks. More than a 50% increase in the application’s performance and a reduction in client response of the organisation is the reason behind the success of Node.js. Node.js is more popular in the USA more than 6.3 million websites make use of it. Companies like Netflix, Paypal, and Linkedin are some of the big giants to adopt Node.js to build fast high-quality applications.

What is Node.js?

Node.js is a runtime environment that is based on the engine of Google Chrome’s Version 8, Javascript. It uses the event-driven, and non-obstructive Input/Output architecture, thereby making it more efficient and also lightweight. It is cross-platform as the applications are written in JavaScript but can also run on Mac OS X, Linux, and Windows. Therefore it is perfect for real-time and data-intensive applications that work across distributed devices.

It has a big community of developers who are continuously developing new Node.Js Modules so that the development of the applications becomes more easy and quick. Millions of front-end developers can write Java scripts for browsers and can now write both the server and client-side code without learning a completely different language using Node.js. A developer should always consider a few things while writing the Node.Js application. To handle the data flow the developer will have to use callbacks, async functions, promises, or events. Since Node.js is a single thread one must be very careful not to block the thread with lengthy computation.

A Brief History of Node.js

It is always good to know from the beginning so that you can connect the dots. Here’s a brief history of Node.js!

Node.js is about thirteen years old and was initially written by Ryan Dahl in the year 2009. As discussed in the article above Node.js is a javascript runtime environment that runs using a Javascript engine. This indicates that it all began with Javascript. To manipulate the web pages inside a browser, Netscape created Javascript a programming language like a tool used for scripting which was known as 

“Netscape Navigator”.  Selling Web Servers was a part of the business model of Netscape which had an environment that was known as  “Netscape LiveWire” which could create pages dynamic in nature with the help of server-side Javascript.  Unfortunately, it wasn’t successful and server-side javascript was not popular until recently till the introduction of Node.js. The key factor behind the fame or growth of Node.js was ‘Timing’. Because of Web 2.0 applications such as Google, Flickr, and others, Javascript was considered to be a more important and serious language. The  Javascript engine also started to become better as many browsers in the market were competing to provide performance better than the others. All the development teams started to work harder so that better support along with the efficiency of running it faster could be offered. Due to the competition in the market, the engine behind Node.js improved significantly.

Though Node.js can be considered as built at the right time and place, luck wasn’t the reason for success. It has introduced innovative approaches for server-side Javascript development which has already helped many developers and organisations across the globe.

Version of Node.js 

A timeline of the milestones achieved by Node.Js will help to understand its growth and development.

2009:

  • Node.Js was born
  • The first form of Node Package Manager was created 
  • It was presented for the first time by Ryan Dahl at the JSConf

2010:

  • Express which is a web development framework of Node.js was born.
  • The initial version of Socket.io was released.
  • Node.js 0.2.0 was also released.

2011:

  • Node Package Manager version 1.0 was released.
  • Big companies like LinkedIn, Uber, and others adopted Node.js to improve efficiency and also customer experience.
  • Hapi, a node.js framework was also born.

2012:

  • Adoption of the technology continued rapidly.

2013:

  • A very big blogging company name ‘Ghost’ adopted Node.js.
  • Koa which is also a web framework of Node.js was born
  • Companies like eBay adopted Node.js to build applications.

2014:

  • An advisory board for Node.js was set up for an open governance model.
  • To introduce ES6 support to move faster io.js major fork or the big fork of Node.js was introduced.

2015:

  • Node.js Foundation was born.
  • Meger of Io.js and Node.js
  • Node Package Manager introduced private modules
  • Version 4 of Node.js was released. ( Note: versions 1, 2, and also 3 were never released)

2016:

  • It is also known as the year of Leftpad!
  • The Yarn package manager was released.
  • Version 6 of Node.js became the LTS version.

2017:

  • Node Package Manager focussed was shifted to security.
  • Node.js version 8 was released with testing suits thereby making it officially a target for the JS engine along with Google Chrome.
  • It was a huge year for Node.js with approx 3 Billion NPM( Node package manager) downloads a week.
  • Node reached around 40000 stars on Github and the number of contributors grew to 1500.
  • According to “The Battery Ventures open source software Index Node is now the Fourth most predominant open-source project.

2018:

  • Node.js version 10 and version 11 were released.
  • Experimental support of ES modules.mjs were introduced.

 2019:

  • Node.js version 11 and version 13 were introduced.

2020:

  • Node.js version 14 and version 15 were introduced.

2021:

  • Node.js version 16 and version 17 were introduced.

2022:

  • Node.js version 18 the latest version was introduced. 

Use Cases of Node.js

Real-Time Chat Apps: 

Nowadays many organizations provide the facility of real-time chat applications to their users. They have now become the need of the hour, especially for commercial sites as well as digital products. Node.js has all the required functions to build real-time applications. Developers can easily implement events on the server side and also push notifications that are widely used in real-time chats. An exchange of two-way with the help of an open connection is also possible with WebSockets in Node.Js which is also ideal for real-time chat. The user can install libraries like webSocket-node and socket.io for easy deployment of the functionality in real time.

The user only needs to make sure that the library is installed on both the side client and server-side and then create broadcasters, and event emitters so that the messages can be pushed. The biggest advantage the developer has is, that the entire setup is possible with the help of a few lines of code.

Single Page Applications: 

SPA(Single page application) has now become very popular these days. To provide the users a desktop application-like experience the whole application is fit on one page. Since Node.js can handle the heavy Input/Output (I/O) operations and asynchronous calls it is one of the best options to build SPA. Node.js works thoroughly with applications that are single-page and data-driven which uses the server to transmit data to the client and the client will do all the HTML rendering. Therefore Node.Js is one of the best ways to build complex single-page applications.

Application Streaming: 

The distribution of software that is on demand is known as Application streaming. They are different from remote server apps. Application streaming requires downloading a few sections of the application only on demand on the devices. This helps the server and the local PC to avoid getting overloaded. Once the application is downloaded the user can launch it without connecting to the internet. 

The architecture of microservices allows the user to construct the applications as a group of discrete modules. Every module has a different purpose in the application operation and is tested and updated regularly. After the team has completed all the modules to build the whole application they will combine all of them. This is very beneficial to applications that have large businesses. This is because organizations have large and dispersed teams across geographics. This system keeps all of them on track. Netflix is one good example of an organization that uses Node.js for applications. 

Internet of Things (IoT):

The ability to process several contemporaneous requests is one of the biggest advantages of using Node.js technology for IoT(Internet of Things). IoT helps devices such as beacons and sensors to both exchange and communicate data with the help of the internet. Node.Js servers do not stop and complete all the data requests quickly.  It acts seamlessly and efficiently app layer in between both the databases and IoT devices that hold the data they generate.

Latest Versions of Node.js

Node.js releases an update every six months. The new release is also the latest release for the six months so that writers get time to add support. Since 26th October 2021 Node 16 is the LTS version, while Node 18 has become the current version in the year  2022, 19 April.  Therefore the next version of LTS which is v18 will be launched on 10th October 2022. Version 8 of the Javascript engine will be upgraded to Version 8 9.0, compiler updates, toolchains, and others would be some of the few upgradation. 

Conclusion

Hope you have now understood the concept of Node.Js and its evolution. We learned how Node.js can be leveraged to achieve several organizational goals. The primary objective of Node.js is to develop scalable applications. From basic Javascript, it has now developed into a key run time environment. The demand for Node.js has grown over years and it continues with leaps and bounds and so are the opportunities. To learn more about Node.js and career opportunities visit HKR Trainings. For any queries please drop a message in the comment section below.