Node.js is one of the most popular back-end development tools. It’s used a lot, especially in the U.S., where Silicon Valley is known as the start-up capital of the world. It’s no wonder that Node.js is already on the backend of over 175,398 web apps, including some of the biggest ones on the market. This article will describe the advantages of Node.js web development, discuss which enterprises and well-known companies use it, and answer the question: Why should you use it? Let’s get started!
 

What is Node.js?

The Node.js platform is a JavaScript-based server-side runtime environment.

It just means that you can choose to use JavaScript for back-end development.

Now developers can build both front-end and back-end server-side websites with the same tool. A more detailed explanation of Node.js will follow.

Ryan Dahl made Node.js back in 2009. It was shown for the first time at European JSConf at the end of the year. Google’s V8 JavaScript engine, an event loop, and a low-level I/O API were all put together in Node.js. At first, it was only available on Linux and Mac OS. After three years, a version for Windows was made available.

A small project now supports hundreds of add-ons and is an open-source web framework with MIT license. Not to mention the software development community, which still chooses to learn Node.js for web development even though there are many other technologies available. Stack Overflow’s 2019 survey says that Node.js is now the most popular tool in the “Frameworks, Libraries, and Tools” category, with 50% of answers!

via Stack Overflow 2019 survey

Node.js services are becoming more and more popular, which is why they are always getting something new. A software engineer can be sure that there will be at least two new releases a year. The current version of Node.js, Node.js 14, will be supported until April 2023.

The new features in Node.js 14 (client side / web server) have already been described on our blog, so make sure to check out that article if you’re interested.

What is Node.js Used for?

Okay, now you know the basics. Let’s get into details and see what makes Node.js so appealing to global software companies and developers?

API

It is the most common type of application today. Almost all web apps need some kind of backend to talk to databases or other services outside of the app. Because there is such a large community, it is easy to find a library to make a REST or GraphQL API. In the past, Node.js was only recommended for applications with a small number of operations that took up a lot of CPU time. Since version 10.5.0, you can do it with worker threads.

Streaming Web Applications

We use streaming services every day to watch videos and listen to music. We can watch all of our favourite TV shows at once on the internet, without having to download anything. Is it a good idea to stream data with Node.js? Of course! It comes with a built-in streams module that lets you process a lot of data in chunks, one after the other. Because of this, you don’t have to store or cache data temporarily in your application memory at all. Clients will also not need to deal with things like video encoding because chunks can be worked on while streaming.

Real-time Web Applications

Because Node.js is one of the technologies that can handle a lot of I/O operations well, you can use it to build real-time web applications, like a chat room where people can talk to each other in real time. Or maybe a tool that lets people work on the same document at the same time with other people. Done! Building a node.js app for a video conference won’t be hard either. The Events API and Web Sockets in Node make it possible. Node js in web development is like a fish in water!

Microservices

This way of making apps has become very popular in recent years. With Node.js, you can easily scale your solution since it’s small and easy to use. Node.js is the technology we use most often to build and run microservices. And it’s not just The Software House. When companies want to move to microservices, a lot of them switch to Node.js. 

Command Line Tools

In addition to basic command-line tools, NPM provides a huge variety of packages that you can use to build more advanced tools.

Why Using Node.js is Great for Business? Scalability!

You already know why people in the tech world love Node.js. Now we’ll talk about why Node.js is so good for business.

Node.js is a fast, high-performance, and lightweight web framework that is perfect for asynchronous side programming. You can do more than one thing at the same time with Node.js. You can also use serverless to your advantage and choose from different cloud computing models and providers, such as Amazon Web Service or Google Cloud Platform.

Node.js makes it possible to have better scalability, better performance, and lower costs. By using ready-to-run node modules that can be used again and again, your team will save a lot of time. You can also change the size of your team based on what resources you need at the time, just like your business starts out small and grows.

Even though it’s not (yet) THE most popular web framework, Node.js has definitely beaten out other frameworks in terms of traffic.

Benefits of Node js development

I could go on and on about how great Node.js is. We don’t have that much time left, and you still need to work on your project. I’ll talk about the most important benefits of Node.js that, in my experience as a Node.js developer, are real boons for both business and software development.

• • Open-source NPM Repository – With over 60,000 modules to choose from, it’s easy to find a ready-to-use solution to your problem instead of starting from scratch.
• • Scalable Systems: Because Node.js is so lightweight, it’s easy to scale the application horizontally by putting multiple copies of your project on different servers. You can also make your system bigger by adding more CPU cores. To do this, you can use a built-in cluster module that splits the application process into as many pieces as you have CPU cores.
• • Good for Microservices – We’ve talked about this before, but it’s still important to say that when companies want to move to microservices, they often switch to Node.js. Just a thought.
• • Single Programming Language – Today, JavaScript is the most popular choice for front-end programming languages. Because it can also be used on back, it makes the app easier to keep up to date. You don’t have to hire two people to do two different jobs backend and frontend positions. It’s a huge advantage to save your time and money.
• • Non-Blocking I/O Paradigm – The hardest thing about I/O operations is having to wait for a response. Node.js only has one thread, so waiting for a database query will stop the whole app. That’s why you should use an API that doesn’t block. When it is called, the thread can move on to another task. A callback will let you know that the I/O operation is done when it is done. The main benefit and result of this method is that it is more efficient because it can handle a lot of connections at once.
• • Reusable Code – JavaScript is the most popular programming language, so it’s easy to share code between different parts of your system. You can also use the same pieces of code on both the frontend and the backend.
• • Time to Market – Often, a business has a great idea for a web app but needs to test it on the market to see if it works. With Node.js, you can make an MVP very quickly, which cuts down on the time and money needed to make it.
• • Tested on Production – Many companies have taken a look at Node.js since it was developed in 2009. Well, it worked pretty well because many big players chose to switch to Node.js.

I want you to know that I’m not making this up. “Node.js User Survey Report” is a study that speaks for itself. In many ways, Node.js is good for business. As you can see below, the benefits of Node.js have a positive effect not only on the products, but also on costs, team culture, morale, customer satisfaction, and so on.

Which Companies Decided on Using Node.js in their Web Applications?

📺 Netflix

In 2020, it will have nearly 183 million subscribers, making it one of the biggest and most popular streaming services in the world. It’s no joke to find a scalable way to stream 1 billion hours of video data every week, plus handle other requests. As Netflix became more popular, it took longer to start up and the web app in general got slower. Due to their knowledge of JavaScript, Netflix chose Node.js, as they did not have to learn anything new (killing two birds with one stone), and they liked the modules Node offered.

I hope you’re sitting down, because the numbers are coming. By using Node.js, Netflix was able to cut the time it took to start up from 40 minutes to less than 1 minute.

💸 PayPal

PayPal has more than 325 million active accounts all over the world. PayPal’s net payment volume for the first quarter of 2020 was 190.57 billion USD, with 3.26 billion online transactions. You can’t deny that those numbers are a lot.

PayPal chose to use Node.js to build the parts of the web app that end users see. One of the things they like about Node.js is that the browser and server applications are both written in JavaScript, so the developers all work on the same code. By using Node.js, PayPal’s developers made the app smaller, faster, and more modular.

In what way? By adding Node.js, PayPal was able to handle twice as many requests per second, reducing the load time of a page by 200ms.

👩‍💼 LinkedIn

Microsoft bought LinkedIn in 2016 for a crazy amount of money: 26 billion USD. By 2020, LinkedIn had more than 675 million users.

It is only Node.js that is used for the mobile server. In addition to easy scaling, Node.js’s ability to communicate with other services was important to the LinkedIn team. Mobile LinkedIn apps interact with APIs and databases on the platform.

🚕 Uber

Uber is available in more than 600 cities and 65 countries, and every day it makes more than 14 million trips. In total, over 10 billion people have been driven to their destinations by nearly 4 million Uber drivers around the world. I guess when we order an Uber home after a night out, we don’t think about the scale…

Uber needed a really fast and scalable way to handle the millions of notifications, passenger-driver matches, and requests that come in every day. They chose Node.js because it can handle a lot of information quickly and it can be looked at, changed, and errors can be fixed without having to restart the app. Now, Uber’s development team can write new code and fix bugs whenever they need to.

🔎 Groupon

By 2020, the deal site Groupon had more than 200 million mobile app downloads and 41.8 million unique customers who had bought at least one deal in a year.

Groupon’s development team saw numerous benefits from switching from Ruby on Rails to Node.js. They were able to develop and implement features much faster without relying on other engineering teams, and pages loaded 50% faster. They used less hardware to handle the same amount of traffic.

🛒 eBay

182 million users in 190 countries, with the US being the biggest market (35% of all US mobile users use the eBay mobile app!).

This crazy amount of traffic needed a solution that was scalable, fast, and stable. By switching to Node.js, eBay wanted to do two things: make their app as real-time as possible and connect and set up eBay services that show any information to end users. Goals were reached, so that’s not a surprise.

🚀 NASA

Last but not least, Node.js isn’t rocket science, but it has helped people who work in that field. NASA is probably one of the most important groups in the world (the Milky Way galaxy? the universe? ), so it must know when it sees a useful piece of technology. It just so happens that Node.js saves people’s lives in space.

In 2013, astronaut Luca Parmitano was on a spacewalk when water started to leak into his helmet.

Putting something over his eyes, ears, and nose. Chris Cassidy, who worked with him, was there to help him get to safety. NASA stopped all spacewalks and looked into what had happened.

Node.js was a simple decision since NASA was already writing JavaScript. As a result, construction time and costs were reduced. Moreover, NASA liked npm’s work with Docker to produce a microservice architecture with independent APIs, functions, and applications using the asynchronous event loop of cloud-based databases.

A NASA website explains how Node.js keeps astronauts safe and data accessible. The system transfers the data about the EVA spacesuits from three legacy databases to the cloud database using a microservices architecture with separate APIs and applications built in Node.js. This allows NASA to quickly access the data they need to keep astronauts safe and make sure their data is secure and accessible. Node.js also enables NASA to quickly develop and deploy new applications, making it an invaluable tool in the effort to keep astronauts safe. Yes, Node.js is used for big projects like transferring data for EVA spacesuits for NASA.” Now, users can ask everything of that one database, which cuts the time it takes to get to a full set of data by about 300%. First, safety!

Of course, this list doesn’t have everything. Twitter,, the Wall Street Journal, Medium, Aliexpress, the BBC, Tumblr, Github, Home Depot, IBM, Coursera,  BMW, Mastercard, Pinterest, Sony, Trello, Siemens, Mozilla, Target, Airbnb, Walmart, Wikipedia, The New Yorker, and Change.org are also well-known companies that use Node.js.

Why Use Node.js Development in your Next Software Project?

This article begins with a description of Node.js, our sweetheart at The Software House. As one of India’s largest Node.js teams, we have an experienced team of Node.js developers. There is no end to the growth!

Our Node.js experts don’t just finish many successful Node.js software projects. Check out some of the Node.js applications in our portfolio. 

So, if you want to know why you should use Node.js in your software project, you don’t need to look any further. We’re here to assist and advise you – schedule free software consultations now.