Introduction of Node.js

Node.js is a JavaScript runtime environment for building and running server-side JavaScript applications(allows you to run javascript on the server). Node.js applications are built-in JavaScript and may run wifthout any adjustments or additional installation needs on Linux, macOS, Windows, and various other operating systems.

Node.js creates an event loop for real-time apps using non-blocking I/O, which runs on a single thread instead of concurrency with lines like traditional programming languages. You make great for highly responsive applications like games that need to update themselves in real-time, requiring user input (as opposed to traditional multithreaded programming).

Node.js is not a single piece of software, It is an ecosystem that contains many different module packages, or libraries with a specific purpose, created and maintained by the Node.js community. A module system that allows Node.js to run on various platforms and use javascript on the server-side allows the creation of web servers and networking tools.

Node.js was initially developed in 2009 by Ryan Dahl as a way to build websites faster, quickly responding to user requests, and updating content in real-time much like Gmail does when you press reply. The technology behind it is event-driven asynchronous I/O operations, allowing a web server to respond quickly without waiting for tasks such as database lookups or disk reads.

Who Created Node.js?

Node.js is an open-source project led by Ryan Dahl, TJ Holowaychuk, and Lars Bak at Microsoft. He wanted to provide a platform for JavaScript on their Windows operating systems and contributed to the project since 2006.

The project was announced in March 2007 with a call for participation on a mailing list. After some debate, Lars realized that he would have time to continue the development while working on his new job at Joyent (now part of IBM) so he decided that he would be the lead developer for Node.js.

History of Node.js

Node.js is now a mature, production-ready application platform built on Google's V8 engine and designed to address the most pressing needs of web developers. Node.js has become entrenched in our everyday lives as it provides a discreet way for us to access server-side functionality, which can be mixed in with JavaScript code.

Node.js was created by Ryan Dahl in 2009 and introduced as an independent open source project under the MIT license. Node's influence is evident across many levels of technology architecture, including popular internet-based software such as Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, Uber, Trello, and Dropbox.

Node.js is set up to run on any operating system. Theoretically, its popularity is documented primarily on Linux-based systems due to the flexibility of npm and a package manager explicitly developed for Node.js applications.

This module provides a high-level interface to the V8 JavaScript engine. It also includes a JavaScript engine API for use by client-side web applications. This feature is intended for Node.js users who want to develop programs running on V8 and do not need the low-level facilities provided by libuv or c_ulonguest and Node.js is a combination of the V8 JavaScript Chrome engine, a low-level I/O API, and an event loop.

Top 8 Core Components of Node.js Platform

Let's cover the basics of Node.js. Node.js is a cross-platform, open-source runtime environment for developing server-side web applications. Its core components are:

1) NPM: NPM is used to manage software development projects and packages from the command line (npm install).

2) Runtime Environment: Node.js is an event-driven, non-blocking I/O model. Evented I/O means that Node.js can handle multiple client requests simultaneously through a single thread.

3) Core Library: The core library consists of modules, including streams and buffers. These modules form a foundation for interacting with the operating system. This core library is organized with complex functionality in single or multiple javascript files, which can be reused for Node.js applications.  

4) V8 Engine: The V8 engine, developed by Google, delivers a high performance critical to Node's success. The V8 engine provides a runtime environment for executing javascript code. The main benefit of the V8 engine is direct code conversion into machine code.

5) REPL (Read-Eval-Print Loop): Node.js comes with an interactive Interpreter that you can use to run JavaScript on the fly and understand how it works under Node.js's hood at runtime (Node.js). It provides a command-line interface of javascript( execute node expressions ). The REPL user can easily interpret and evaluate code.

6) Environment Variables: Node maintains an array of environment variables (Node.js Environment Variables). You can use these variables to provide security(Protecting Config Keys) for your Node.js application.

7) NPM (Node.js Package Manager): NPM is used to install, update, and manage various Node.js packages that have required to develop web applications. You can find more information about installing modules in the official documentation.

8) C++ extensions module: The C++ extensions module allows programmers to write portions of code in C++, which will be compiled into JavaScript by the V8 engine on the fly.

Awesome Features of Node.js

Node.js is an open-source, cross-platform runtime environment that executes JavaScript code outside the browser, which has made it popular in a wide range of application domains through web servers and using JavaScript on the backend for many apps. Here are some of its key features:

• Uses Google V8 - a fast and stable engine from Chrome's JavaScript engine
• Runs single-threaded without page refreshes while executing code in background threads
• Support for multiple OSes, including Windows, macOS X, Linux, and ARM processors. The API is accessible on both the front-end (through HTML) and backend (JavaScript server-side), creating real-time applications with low latency between 
• Node.js can develop real-time applications and keep in touch with real-time data. In addition, it is a good choice for developing web apps that need to support multiple browsers.

Top Core Benefits of Node.js

• Node.js is an ideal solution for stream processing and distributed computing tasks, especially in event-driven architectures where operations are asynchronous and require lots of CPU power (i.e., live audio streaming, stock market monitoring, social networking apps, etc.).
• Node.js is an excellent choice for creating APIs, mainly when the server is a high volume of requests for a relatively short duration.
• Built on Google V8 JavaScript Engine: As I mentioned above, the core of all Node.js projects in JavaScript. It means you'll get all the benefits of JavaScript, including the Node.js package manager.
• Speed: The performance gains from using a proven mature platform like V8 are significant. V8 is fast enough to build a web server. If you've used any JavaScript-based platform before, you know how terrible they can be. Especially the ones that were built in-house. V8 is already battle-tested means the Node.js team can focus on improving and adding features instead of making sure their code works. This translates into faster load times and an overall faster application.
• Concurrency: Node.js has built-in concurrency functions that give your applications superpowers like the single execution of many tasks at once called "Comet". It's also known as server-side javascript. It will help your site visitors only download one request instead of dozens.

Top 10 Apps Have Been Built Using Node.js 

• Paypal
• Netflix
• LinkedIn
• Uber
• eBay(Shopping site)
• Yahoo
• Mozilla
• GoDaddy
• Medium(Online Publication platform)
• Groupon(Global e-commerce Market Place)

Why Using Node.js for Web Development?

Node.js js is an open-source software framework for creating scalable network applications based on Chrome's JavaScript engine. Web servers and client-server applications are the most prevalent use cases. It also provides power to Internet of Things (IoT) initiatives, such as internet-connected devices.

Node.js js offers a number of framework APIs (application programming interfaces) that make it easy to build server apps with very little code. These frameworks, such as Express and Hapi, give developers many pre-built features that simplify data retrieval from databases and generate HTML pages dynamically from any data source.

The performance of Node.js js can be attributed to its use of non-blocking asynchronous I/O. This uses a single thread per connection, which makes it lightweight and efficient. It also allows Node.js js to use multiple CPUs and operating system threads as long as they are available.

In addition, Node.js js is supported by a large number of modules provided by the community that can help developers accomplish anything they need to build server or internet-connected apps. There are modules for everything from console I/O and databases to serving static content, image manipulation, email, file transfer protocols, and so on.

How Does Node.js Work?

Node.js packages JavaScript function's instructions into small chunks called "nodes". These nodes are then sent to the computer's connected server. The server runs these nodes on one or many "threads", where it has direct control over how many are running at any given time. This architecture allows for high-performance, easy scalability, and low latency for applications that use Node.js.

Node.js is powerful software that can create cutting-edge web apps and websites. Still, it's not widely adopted yet because of having an esoteric operating system dependency: Unix-like operating systems such as Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, etc. Fortunately, Node.js creators saw the need for a JSON server on Windows and Mac and created a simple module called "Nano" that you can add to your Node.js project.

To start, we suggest skimming through Node.js. A few are essential to understand before beginning this article but don't worry about mastering them. First, we'll install everything on our development environment that we need to produce an actual working instance of a JSON server using Nano and Node.js on the windows 8 machine.