For front-end developers who have sound knowledge of JavaScript and several frameworks under their belts, the next step is to learn Node.js. This framework paves the way to the back-end, giving an opportunity to become a full-stack developer. Though it’s not the only reason why you should learn Node.js.
According to Stack Overflow Developers Survey 2020, Node.js is the number one framework among the miscellaneous technologies widely used by software developers. The reason for that is the possibility of building a great variety of applications from real-time chats to SPAs and IoT solutions with Node.js. Therefore, if you’re thinking about which framework to pick up next in your tech stack, Node.js is worth considering.
In this article, we uncover all you need to know about Node.js and share a Node.js developer roadmap for the Node.js starters.
Node.js Basics
Node.js is a front and back-end open-source and cross-platform development framework created in 2009 by Ryan Dahl. It runs on the Chrome V8 engine with its own compiler, interpreter, and runtime environment. This allows Node.js to execute JavaScript code out of the browser which makes Node.js applications super-quick and efficient.
With Node.js, software developers can create a wide range of applications, including:
- Streaming apps;
- Apps based on microservice architecture;
- Real-time collaboration tools;
- Internet of Things (IoT) solutions;
- Single-Page Applications (SPAs);
- Apps based on serverless architecture;
- Real-time websites with push capability, and others.
It is possible due to the non-blocking input-output mechanism and event-driven functionality which makes Node.js an effective and lightweight solution for running data-intensive real-time applications on distributed devices.
The most popular digital companies that use Node.js to build their applications include PayPal, LinkedIn, Netflix, Uber, GoDaddy, NASA, eBay, Walmart, and others.
Node.js Development Trends
What are the most popular Node.js development trends to follow in 2021? Let’s have a look at the most outstanding ones.
Real-Time Applications
Real-time apps are highly popular among businesses in gaming, e-commerce, social media, and other niches. These applications function within a time frame giving their users a sense of immediate response. The latency in real-time apps is measured in seconds, therefore, they are used for building online games, videoconferencing applications, instant messaging apps, and others. All these applications require strong processing powers at the backend and Node.js works best for that.
MEAN and MERN Stacks
MEAN (MongoDB, Express, Angular, Node.js) and MERN (MongoDB, Express, React.js, Node.js) are powerful stacks for building simple and most complex solutions. The main difference between the two stacks is the implementation of Angular or React frameworks.
Angular is a comprehensive solution that involves Model-View-Controller development pattern, two-way data binding, modularization, and others. It allows building interactive, dynamic, and modern SPAs with clean and easy code.
React.js is a super-fast framework for building User Interfaces and their components and Single-Page Applications. It has a virtual DOM and handles only the view layer. These features make React.js a lightweight and simple solution for quick web application development.
Serverless Architecture
With serverless architecture, Node.js developers can focus on the application functionality rather than configuring its servers or worry about various HTTP entry points. All these are handled by the cloud computing platforms. As a result, software developers can reap a wide range of benefits by using serverless architecture such as:
- enhanced code quality;
- reduced development time;
- cheaper development costs;
- reusable code modules;
- simpler-to-scale architecture.
GraphQL
GraphQL represents a viable alternative to using RESTful API technology. This server-side runtime for APIs provides users with the exact data they requested from the databases. As a result, this technology works much faster and appears to be much more flexible than the standard REST.
Recently GraphQL started grabbing more developers’ attention around the world. The most well-known GraphQL users are Airbnb, Atlassian, Compara, Coursera, PayPal, Pinterest, and others. Many software developers combine their Node.js-based applications with GraphQL technology to build applications with well-structured requests and data responses.
Microservice Architecture
The microservice architecture allows developing enterprise-level projects with a simple to maintain and modify code. It breaks application architecture into loosely coupled modules connected to each other with APIs.
With microservice architecture, software developers can build their apps in small and fast iterations, easily scale their apps, and develop their apps faster. Node.js uses the Docker containerization platform and Kubernetes Services to build microservice architecture solutions.
How to Become a Good Node.JS Developer
Node.js is one of the most prominent JavaScript frameworks that is highly demanded in the software development market. Before searching for your first Node.js course let’s consider the technologies you should already know and those you’ll need to learn for working with Node.js.
What you should know to be able to start with Node.js:
- Good understanding of development methodologies, e.g. Agile, DevOps, RAD, Scrum, and others;
- Extensive knowledge of front-end development programming languages such as HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript;
- Good knowledge of at least one front-end development framework such as js, Angular, or Vue.js;
- Proper understanding of what is asynchronous programming and how it works;
- Having experience in user authentication and authorization between various systems, servers, and environments;
- Thorough knowledge of developer tools such as Git, SVN, CVS;
- Ability to integrate various data sources into one system;
- Good knowledge of how to work with preprocessors for server-side CSS, e.g. Stylus;
- Having error management skills and experience in unit testing.
What you’ll need to learn to become a sought after Node.js developer:
- Study the js architecture with single-threaded event loop model architecture and event-driven nature;
- Learn how to implement Node Package Manager (NPM) that contains more than 800,000 development libraries for various purposes;
- Get acquainted and learn how to create and manage JSON file in Node.js which includes all the metadata of the created projects;
- Study Node.js fundamentals such as variables, data types, operators, functions, and others;
- Explore the file system in Node.js and learn how to write data into a file instead of the console;
- Learn how to create and handle events in an event-driven architecture;
- Find out how to work with HTTP modules for server-side networking applications;
- Get acquainted with the frameworks compatible with Node.js such as Experss.js, Meteor.js, AdonisJs, NestJs, Sails, KoaJS, LoopbackJS;
- Study how to manage relational (SQL Server, PostgreSQL, MySQL), NoSQL (MongoDB, Redis), and cloud (CosmoDB, DYnamoDB) databases;
- Get acquainted with search engines such as ElasticSearch, Solr, Sphinx;
- Learn how to perform unit, behavior, integration testing with Node.js using Jasmine, Jest, Enzyme, Chai, and other testing tools.
Conclusion
Node.js is a popular back-end JavaScript framework that keeps the leading position among software developers and businesses. If you are looking for Node.js developers it won’t be difficult to find a Node.js development company with highly skilled professionals ready to share their technical expertise.
Software developers prefer Node.js as it can handle many simultaneous requests, offers great app scalability, and it’s easy to install and use. Many front-end developers pick up Node.js to become full-stack developers.
Businesses opt for this framework as it allows building robust, cross-platform, and real-time applications. This way, companies can integrate streaming and instant-messaging features and create engaging and effective apps.
