NODE.JS: A Growing Ecosystem _ Part 1 (Intro)

Node.js is growing since its birth in 2009. It became a great and rich ecosystem on which developers and companies are increasingly betting.

This is the?first?of a series of?3 articles?covering the?Node.js ?ecosystem.

In this series you will learn the?basics?about the platform, its history and how you can get your?dream job?working with a technology that developers and companies all around the world are increasingly betting.

Also, you’ll?get into code?with a sample that you can use to?improve your previous knowledge?or to?learn something new.

Full Enterprise Platform

Node.js ?is among the few technologies that got big traction and reached the mainstream in little time. Since its birth in 2009, Node.js has evolved enormously and it’s now a full enterprise platform.

One of the main reasons of the popularity and mass adoption is the language used in its core:?JavaScript .

It’s worth mentioning Node.js is not a language, neither a framework. The best way to describe it is to call it a “platform”. But more importantly, Node.js is a JavaScript runtime built on Chrome’s?V8? JavaScript engine.

Photo by Antonio Batini? from Pexels

V8 & WebAssembly Standards

V8?is Google’s open source high-performance JavaScript and?WebAssembly? engine, written in C++. It is used in Google Chrome web browser and in Node.js, among others.

V8 implements the ECMAScript and WebAssembly standards, and runs on multiple platforms and operating systems.

In the last?StackOverflow survey ?from 2021, Node.js appears with?33.91%?in terms of technology popularity. However, as mentioned before, Node.js is a platform that combines other technologies, mainly the JavaScript language. In the same StackOverflow survey, JavaScript is the dominant popular technology reaching the top of the list with?64%. Also, both JavaScript and Node.js are listed with a rate of?63%?(Node.js) and?61%?(JavaScript) in “loved” technologies.

Node.js Performance

Many companies are increasingly betting on Node.js. Amazon, Netflix, eBay, Reddit, LinkedIn, PayPal are just a few examples. In Netflix’s case, they reported in 2018 a shift from JAVA to Node.js, here’s the reason:

• Have a common language for both server-side and browser side (remember, Node.js is basically JavaScript)
• Performance that Node.js offers. From a 4+ startup time they went to under a minute
• Node has a lot of modules that are a mostly open source
• To build an?SPA?(single page application)

Paypal was one of the first big companies who used Node.js at scale. They had a good result in performance with 35% decrease in the average response time for the same pages. Pages were being served 200ms faster.

GitHub has published in its 2021 “State of the Octoverse ” a series of insightful graphics and information. For the first time, the research combines telemetry from 4M+ repositories and surveys from more than 12,000 developers.

Since 2014,?JavaScript is top language .

Node.js among top languages over the years

As we can see, Node.js can also bring a significant cost reduction in development and increase the applications performance.

With the advance of new technologies and techniques, Node.js has leveraged the opportunity to build up a much richer set of tools for debugging, performance, tests and APIs.

Actually, there are technologies like?Electron ?that will use Node.js to allow you to code in JavaScript and build applications to be installed in Windows, Linux or MacOs. Other technologies will allow you to package your web applications to deploy a mobile version of it straight to the stores such as?App Store?or?Play Store.

Future of Technology

JavaScript (actually, ECMAScript) has a clear path of evolution ahead, with the?TC39 ?group, which openly defines and discusses the future of the technology.

TC39 will not only decide the next steps and strategies for the advance of ES, but also listens to communities and markets to select the best set of improvements, always looking to what other languages are doing and what new technologies could make a good use of.

With that in mind, it’s safe to say the Node.js ecosystem, therefore, the JavaScript ecosystem, is currently in a very stable position, growing and gaining more and more trust from both markets and open source communities, keeping the position of most used language/technology in the world.

And that is exactly what makes Node.js and JavaScript such a good bet.

Node.js Can Get You a Great New Job

As this technology grows and advances, companies from around the globe are using it to improve and increase their businesses.

VanHack ?has fantastic opportunities in Canada, the US and Europe. Right now,?we’re hiring more than 100 FullStack developers ?to work for a fast-growing fin-tech company in Calgary and Winnipeg.

apply today if you're a software developer looking for a job - sponsored visa, excelente benefitis and salary. click HERE.        

Not a FullStack, you can check on other unique opportunities?HERE .

In the next articles you’ll see:

Part 2 – Node.js: the basics

– The basics of JavaScript

– The basics of Node.js ecosystem

Part 3 –?Node.js: getting started

– Hello world

– A sample application

– Publishing the application

This content was created by a VanHack’s partner:?BRAZILJS .

Stay tuned for what’s coming next.