As an asynchronous event-driven JavaScript runtime, Node.js is designed to build scalable network applications. In the following “hello world” example, many connections can be handled concurrently. Upon each connection, the callback is fired, but if there is no work to be done, Node.js will sleep.
const http = require('node:http');const hostname = '127.0.0.1';const port = 3000;const server = http.createServer((req, res) => { res.statusCode = 200; res.setHeader('Content-Type', 'text/plain'); res.end('Hello World');});server.listen(port, hostname, () => { console.log(`Server running at http://${hostname}:${port}/`);});
This is in contrast to today’s more common concurrency model, in which OS threads are employed. Thread-based networking is relatively inefficient and very difficult to use. Furthermore, users of Node.js are free from worries of dead-locking the process, since there are no locks. Almost no function in Node.js directly performs I/O, so the process never blocks except when the I/O is performed using synchronous methods of Node.js standard library. Because nothing blocks, scalable systems are very reasonable to develop in Node.js.
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It is an open-source, cross-platform JavaScript runtime environment. The development of scalable applications especially tailored for network environments and meant to be deployed on interconnected devices, is a complex endeavor, one reserved for professionals and expert users with the appropriate tools for the job.
One of the frameworks made just for such purposes is Node.js, and, as its name suggests, it relies on JavaScript. More precisely, under the hood, it is powered by Google’s own V8 JS engine, the same one that can be found inside the widely known Chrome browser.