What is Node Js?

• Node.js is an extremely powerful JavaScript-based platform that’s built on Google Chrome's JavaScript V8 Engine, used to develop I/O intensive web applications like video streaming sites, single-page applications, online chat applications, and other web apps.

• Node.js is used by large, established companies and newly-minted startups alike. Open-source and completely free, the platform is used by thousands of developers around the world. It brings plenty of advantages to the table, making it a better choice than other server-side platforms like Java or PHP in many cases.

WHY USE NODE?

Some of the advantages of Node.js include:

• Node.js library is very fast as it is built on Google Chrome’s V8 JavaScript engine.

• All APIs in the Node.js library are asynchronous, which means a Node.js based server never waits for an API to return data rather, it moves to the next API after calling it.

• Node.js uses a single-threaded model with the event looping. The event mechanism helps the server respond in a non-blocking way which makes the server highly scalable.

• Node.js is portable. It is available in different operating systems like Windows, Linux, macOS, Solaris, freeBSD etc.

History Of NodeJs In 2009, a Software Engineer at Google Ryan Dahl wrote Node.JS. At the very first version, it was only supported on macOS and Linux, but eventually, it was supported with other OS as well. Dahl led the development and maintenance of Node.JS and later it was sponsored by Joyent.