What are the Pros and Cons of Node.JS Web App Development

Table of Content

1. Introduction

2. What is Node.js?

3. Pros of Node.js web app development

Easy to learn

Rich ecosystem

Enhance performance

Robust technology stack

Active community support

4. Cons of Node.js web app development

Asynchronous programming model

Lack of stable API

Callback hell issue

Lack of library support

Reduce performance when handling heavy computing operations

5. Key Takeaway

Introduction

To achieve success in this quickly evolving technology sector, businesses need to cover all the aspects of application development. Because the competition in the modern world is extremely intense, so you can't afford to be self-approving. And to perfectly build a product, you need efficient and strong backing from technologies such as Node.js development to support it.

Also, Many companies use Node.js such as LinkedIn, Uber, Netflix, Trello, and NASA. Node.js has led the web as the most powerful client-side platform. The benefits of Node.js for web application development have now expanded and become more effective, simple, and cost-effective with Javascript.

There are numerous factors to take into consideration as a tech expert. For instance, application limitations, speed, tech scalability, app performance, and much more. Decisions made at an initial stage help to determine how quickly your product will reach the market. Node.js has been employed as a server-side proxy where it is capable of handling multiple connections in a non-blocking manner with different response times and gathering information from various source points. Apart from this, using an event loop allows Node.js to perform non-blocking I/O operations and handle multiple operations executing in the background.

In this post, we’re going to discuss in detail the pros and cons of Node.js web application development. But before we proceed further, let us first understand what exactly Node.js is. So without any delay, let’s get down to work!

What is Node.js?

Node.js is an open-source JavaScript environment that runs on the V8 engine and executes the code outside the web browser. It is a cross-platform server-side platform that was released in 2009 and made a huge impact ever since. Node.js has the ability to develop scalable network applications which can be easily accessible since it is an open-source platform.

With the level of advantages that Node.js offers, it has now become a leader in the web development industry and a popular platform that many giant companies such as Netflix, Walmart, NASA, eBay, etc. use.

In short, Node.js is a JavaScript runtime environment that helps developers in building real-time network applications and operates on a single-threaded event-based loop to make multiple non-blocking executions.

Pros of Node.js web app development

1. Easy to learn

As we all know, JavaScript is one of the most widely used and popular programming languages to build scalable web applications. Whether you are an expert or a fresher, it is always recommended to use Node.js as it has a gentle learning curve which helps you to have a good grasp of it. As a newbie in the development sector, it becomes easier for you to kick start your career using Node.js if you have some basic knowledge about the concepts used in Node.js. Compared to other programming languages, Node.js is one of the easiest platforms used at the backend that requires less time to work with it.

2. Rich ecosystem

If you have ever worked with Node.js, you must have known that a default npm serves as a marketplace for open-source JavaScript tools that plays an essential role in the advance of this platform. Currently, you will find more than 836,000 libraries in the npm registry and 10,000+ new ones released every week. This shows that Node.js has a quite rich ecosystem. According to the survey, more than 95% of modern web applications use npm modules for some or other reasons.

3. Enhance performance

We know that Node.js analyzes the JavaScript code using Google's V8 engine and then it compiles the code directly into the machine code which makes it easier to implement the code. One of the major advantages of using Node.js is to build powerful applications that deliver desired results in just a blink of an eye. An app developed using Node.js has the ability to multitask that highly impacts the application's overall performance.

4. Robust technology stack

In 2009 when Node.js was introduced to the world, it proved itself as one of the best and most popular programming languages across the globe. In turn, Node.js has become a one-stop solution in the development industry as it allows developers to build scalable web applications in real-time. Also, you'll be surprised to know that according to a survey conducted in 2018, there are 360,500,900 downloads and around 750 new contributors, and still the project seems to be made stronger than ever. If you're working with Node.js for backend development, you'll automatically reap all the advantages of full-stack JavaScript development such as high performance, better efficiency, speed, code sharing, code reuse, better developer productivity, and much more.

5. Active community support

The active community support behind Node.js makes it one of the best platforms for developing web apps because they are continuously contributing to development and improvement. Strong support from the community makes it a big yes for the developers so that they can get an open JavaScript source code for any product development required. There are experts and professional developers having years of experience working with Node.js that make the community even more powerful and offer easy solutions to initiate many further developers in the future.

Cons of Node.js web app development

1. Asynchronous programming model

If you want to make your software scalable, then you need to document all the essential requirements of the asynchronous programming model. But many developers find this model complex when compared to the linear blocking I/O programming as it makes the code clumsy and developers have to rely on the nested calls. The asynchronous approach operates each task in the queue where several tasks are still running in the background.

2. Lack of stable API

There are a few changes found in the JavaScript code bases that are not compatible with the previous Node.js versions. Due to this reason, developers have to make some modifications to the code to make sure that it is compatible with the latest version of Node.js.

3. Callback hell issue

As we mentioned earlier, the asynchronous nature of Node.js is heavily dependent on callbacks. This means the functions that run in the queue are accomplished by keeping several tasks in the background, each with its callback, which might lead to callback hell and impact the code quality.

fs.readdir(source, function (err, files) {

if (err) {

console.log('Error finding files: ' + err)

} else {

files.forEach(function (filename, fileIndex) {

console.log(filename)

gm(source + filename).size(function (err, values) {

if (err) {

console.log('Error identifying file size: ' + err)

} else {

console.log(filename + ' : ' + values)

aspect = (values.width / values.height)

widths.forEach(function (width, widthIndex) {

height = Math.round(width / aspect)

console.log('resizing ' + filename + 'to ' + height + 'x' + height)

this.resize(width, height).write(dest + 'w' + width + '_' + filename, function(err) {

if (err) console.log('Error writing file: ' + err)

})

}.bind(this))

}

})

})

}

})

Image source

Yes, this might be a sign of following poor coding principles and a lack of working with JavaScript and Node.js.

4. Lack of library support

You'll find several NPM registries and libraries when working with Node.js which are incomplete, have poor quality, or are not appropriately documented. This inaccurate monitoring is tough when building a complex web application. Only experts and professionals having immense experience working with Node.js have the ability to achieve success. In fact, sometimes the open-source variety of libraries can create a lack of high coding standards.

5. Reduce performance when handling heavy computing operations

Apart from the advantages that we discussed in this post, one of the most inadequate stages of Node.js is being single-threaded and event-driven. Yes, it makes the execution of heavy CPU-based computing complex and requires more time. And to overcome this, Node.js came up with the worker threads module as it allows developers to execute multiple threads at the same time without being entirely equipped in dealing with CPU-bound computation challenges.

Key Takeaway

So that's it for today! After reading this post, you must have known everything about Node.js. We have listed out the pros and cons of Node.js that can help you to identify whether it is a good platform for your project or not. We know that it plays a vital role in building scalable, robust, and high-performing applications having excellent speed, performance, and scale.

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