My FeedDiscussionsHeadless CMS
New
Sign in
Log inSign up
Learn more about Hashnode Headless CMSHashnode Headless CMS
Collaborate seamlessly with Hashnode Headless CMS for Enterprise.
Upgrade ✨Learn more

Post hidden from Hashnode

Posts can be hidden from Hashnode network for various reasons. Contact the moderators for more details.

Node.js - An Introduction

Karan Choudhary's photo
Karan Choudhary
·Mar 16, 2021·

3 min read

Node.js - An Introduction

Node.js was first introduced back in 2009 by Ryan Dahl at the annual European JSConf. It is an application runtime environment that allows you to write server-side applications in JavaScript. Built on top of the Chrome V8 JavaScript engine, It is capable of executing JS code outside of a web browser.

Why use Node.js?
Primarily, NodeJS is used for non-blocking, event-driven servers. Other notable uses of Node.js are:

  • Building multiplayer web browser games

  • Creating Real-Time Applications, complex SPAs (Single-Page Applications), and even websites

  • Developing backend API services

What are the prerequisites for learning Node.js?
Following are the various perquisites for learning NodeJS:

  • A good understanding of the JavaScript programming
  • Fluency in using command online
  • Practical knowledge of OOP (Object-oriented programming) and functional programming paradigms

Node.js Frameworks and Tools
In order to make things easy and exciting for developers, thousands of libraries were built upon Node.js by the community. Some of them are:

  • Egg.js enter image description here Egg.js is a simple javascript library to add easter eggs to web pages. It is used to build better enterprise frameworks and apps with Node.js & Koa

  • Socket.io enter image description here Socket.IO is a library that enables real-time, bidirectional and event-based communication between the browser and the server.

  • Next.js enter image description here Next.js is an open-source React front-end development web framework that enables functionality such as server-side rendering and generating static websites for React based web applications.

  • Meteor enter image description here Meteor, or MeteorJS, is a free and open-source isomorphic JavaScript web framework written using Node.js. Meteor allows for rapid prototyping and produces cross-platform code.

  • Koa enter image description here Koa is a new web framework designed by the team behind Express, which aims to be a smaller, more expressive, and more robust foundation for web applications and APIs. By leveraging async functions, Koa allows you to ditch callbacks and greatly increase error-handling.

  • Express enter image description here Express. js is a free and open-source web application framework for Node.js. It is used for designing and building web applications quickly and easily.

Why should you learn Node.js?
There are other programming languages also which we can use to build back-end services so what makes Node.js different.

  • It’s easy to get started and can be used for prototyping and agile development.

  • It provide fast and highly scalable services.

  • It uses JavaScript everywhere so it’s easy for a JavaScript programmer to build back-end services using Node.js

  • Source code is cleaner and consistent.

  • Large ecosystem for open source library.

Is Node.js frontend or backend?

enter image description here NodeJS offers complete web development because it has the ability to support both frontend and backend development.

Conclusion
I love to write about the things I learned and applied. Subscribe to my newsletter and stay up-to-date with my latest blog posts.

⚡ Happy learning!