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What is Nodejs

Node.js is an open-source, cross-platform, JavaScript runtime environment. It allows developers to create server-side and networking applications using JavaScript. It’s built on Google Chrome's V8 JavaScript engine, and its applications are written in JavaScript. Node.js was developed by Ryan Dahl in 2008.

Why Use Node.js?​

Node.js is highly scalable and efficient, making it perfect for data-intensive real-time applications that run across distributed devices. It uses an event-driven, non-blocking I/O model, providing lightweight efficiency.

A few reasons why developers prefer Node.js:

  1. Asynchronous and Event-Driven: All APIs of Node.js library are asynchronous, meaning they are non-blocking. It essentially means a Node.js based server never waits for an API to return data. The server moves to the next API after calling it, and a notification mechanism of Events in Node.js helps the server get a response from the previous API call.

  2. Single-Threaded: Node.js uses a single-threaded model with event looping. This type of event mechanism benefits the server to respond in a non-blocking way and makes the server highly scalable, as opposed to traditional servers which create limited threads to handle requests.

  3. Highly Scalable: Node.js is highly scalable because event mechanism helps the server respond in a non-blocking way and makes the server highly scalable as opposed to traditional servers which create limited threads to handle requests.

  4. No Buffering: Node.js applications never buffer any data. These applications simply output the data in chunks.

  5. Open Source: Node.js has an open-source community which has produced many excellent modules to add additional capabilities to Node.js applications.

How Node.js Works?​

Unlike traditional web-serving methods where each request spawns a new thread or even a process, Node.js operates on a single-thread, using non-blocking I/O calls, allowing it to support tens of thousands of concurrent connections without incurring the cost of thread context switching.

Node.js contains a built-in library to allow applications to act as a web server without software such as Apache HTTP Server or IIS.

Where to Use Node.js?​

Node.js can be used in various applications such as:

  • Real-time web applications
  • Network applications
  • Distributed systems
  • General-purpose applications

To sum up, Node.js has a range of applications but it's particularly useful for real-time applications like chat, gaming servers, or an app that needs to process a lot of short messages in real time.

However, Node.js is not advisable for CPU-intensive tasks as incoming requests are queued, which can bog down the Node.js service, making it a less suitable solution for heavy-computing apps.

Node.js is definitely a powerful tool in the right place, for the right task. It’s a great choice if you want to develop high-speed data-intensive, real-time back-end services that power our client applications.