Node.js is a cross-platform JavaScript runtime with a non-blocking I/O model that makes it lightweight and efficient. npm (Node.js' package manager), is the worlds largest ecosystem of open source libraries.There are dozens of articles all over the web that point out pros and cons of the node.js ecosystem. Many of them seem to pay much attention to the fact that it's javascript - the most popular language in the world - and suddenly backend developers can now do front-ends and vice-versa, without the need to learn new language. But there's more to it.In this particular post we'll focus more on our own experience at rspective which we've gathered over the course of ~5 years working with node.js, beginning with the early days and v0.8, through io.js, and till the latest 7.x.With node.js we've built e-commerce platforms, ed-tech portals, social & messaging apps, insur-tech and banking apps, PoS integrations, marketing automation SaaS, hotel-booking systems, and more. In our projects, node.js usually powers entire backends, other times it's just a complementary microservice (e.g. to Salesforce) or a slim component that glues several SaaS together. In every case though, these apps start out as simple prototypes and dynamically grow in new features and volume of traffic over time.So, why would you want to consider node.js in your next project?With node.js you can get rolling quickThanks to the strong developer community and over 450k open-source modules out there, chances are that you don't have to reinvent the wheel and develop basic functionalities from scratch by yourself. Instead, you can just put the building blocks together and...Read More
