JavaScript is one of the core technologies of the World Wide Web. Almost every web browser supports JavaScript without any plugins. JavaScript is a dynamic programming language, whose implementations make dynamic pages with the help of client-side scripts which basically interact with the user.

But I’m sure very few have heard that JS can be used as server side.

Well, in 2009 Ryan Dahl wrote a new javascript which could be used on the server side as well – Node.js. Its development and maintenance was led by Dahl and later sponsored by Joyent.

Node.js is written in C, C++ and yes, JavaScript!

It is an open-source, cross-platform JavaScript run-time environment for executing JavaScript code server-side.

Not to forget, Node.js is built on Chrome’s V8 JavaScript engine, which makes it faster.

Few of the features of Node.js

• Event-driven
• Non-blocking I/O
• Single threaded
• Lightweight
• Efficient

Node.js has set the new era in web development.

There are a lot of new stacks coming up with JS as front-end, like AngularJS, ReactJS, Knockout and so on.

Having JavaScript at both the ends (Front-end & Back-end) can increase the efficiency of the developers to understand the code better and build robust Web Apps.

There are a lot of new frameworks with special features, coming up every day that are based on Node.js. Here is a list as we wrote this article:

• Mean.js (Angular as Front-end)
• Keystone.js (A basic skeleton CMS)
• Express.js (Web Application Framework)
• Mern.js (React as Front-end)
• Socket.io (Real-time bidirectional event-based communication)
• Meteor.js (Reactive, real-time UIs & Web Apps)
• Hapi.js (Rapidly building and testing APIs)
• Koa.js (A callback-less, lightweight middleware framework)
• Sails.js (MVC microframework that’s great for data-heavy enterprise-grade apps)

and the list goes on.

As you can see the Node.js is compatible with so many JavaScript libraries available out there and it has immense scope to grow and build itself. What we are seeing is just the tip of the iceberg.

One key thing not to be missed is, NPM (Node Package Manager) provides more than 99999 ready to use packages. All you need to do is just install a package, import it in your code and use the functionality that is already built and tested by the community. Perhaps if you have created a new functionality you can upload the same on the NPM for the sake of our fellow developers.

Node.js provides us with inbuilt debug options like debug and inspector.

Hope you liked the content so far. I’ll be back with some more stuff next time.

Stay Tuned! Happy Coding!