Why Popular Companies Prefer NodeJS as a Backend for Their Apps

Remember when we would constantly refresh a web page to reload live scores, stock market updates, and airway fares? The websites took a longer time to load and also exhausted CPU usage. Back then, Apache HTTP Server was in the picture, and it failed at tackling concurrent requests. But with the emergence and growth in usage of NodeJS technology, this problem came to an end. Node has become the ultimate choice for app development for several startups and big players.

In 2020, Stack Overflow conducted a ‘Developer Survey’ to determine the most widely used and most popular web framework for web app development. The results showed that Node continues its dominance with a whopping 51.9% stake. The revelation took everyone aback because NodeJS developers are more in demand than PHP developers.

A scenario like this has set out one message loud and clear – NodeJS technology has become the preferred choice for web app development. Since its emergence, web application development has become more convenient.

Node is a JavaScript framework that creates a virtual domain where developers can run their code for testing and debugging errors if any. It is an open-source and cross-platform framework, which means:

1. Developers can pick up an existing NodeJS source code and edit it as per their needs. It comes from Node, an open-source framework.
2. Since Node is a cross-platform software, any developer can use it irrespective of the operating system she/he is using for NodeJS app development.

Advantages of Using NodeJS

NodeJS comes with advantages that make it the most popular choice for several prominent players, including NASA, LinkedIn, Uber, Netflix, and Medium. Read on to know what set of advantages makes Node so desirable.

1. Easy to Learn

NodeJS is very easy to understand and interpret. Developers who have a thorough knowledge of OOP or Object Oriented Programming and JavaScript have an edge when working with Node. It can help in the seamless web application development process. 

2. Simple to Decipher

NodeJS eliminates one of the most challenging problems every developer faces: there is no need to switch between multiple programming languages for frontend and backend development.

3. Lightweight and Compact

Since NodeJS is lightweight, it is faster and easier to use. The time spent in development is nearly reduced by half.

4. Concurrent Requests

Node can handle concurrent requests while simultaneously balancing the load, unlike Apache, which was inefficient at the same task.

5. Community

NodeJS community is one of the biggest communities as it is a widely-used software worldwide. It has a strong base of developers, collaborators, contributors, as well as students around the world.

NodeJS is an open-source community that releases frequent updates and creates new tools to make the development process faster, more efficient, and more secure.

6. Modern

Node is a good choice for developing all types of web apps, especially real-time applications where stability is a big factor. It is also great for building chat apps, streaming apps, game apps, and even collaboration tools.

A Case Study on How Big Players Benefit From NodeJS

As discussed, Node has many advantages, making it the absolute choice of big players, including Uber, Twitter, NASA, and Netflix. Here are a few case studies that explain why the industry giants decided to hire NodeJS developers to switch to NodeJS and how it has turned out for them so far.

Netflix

Netflix is one of the renowned video-on-demand and streaming content platforms. It has managed to retain a whopping 93 million user base worldwide. During its initial days, Netflix relied on Java. But as it shot to fame, it could not handle the large user base. Relying on Java meant higher load time.

The backend and frontend development could not go synchronized. Ultimately, it led to a poor user experience. When Netflix switched to NodeJS, app development and deployment became easier. It received the following benefits:

• The startup time was reduced by 70% when Netflix switched to NodeJS. Currently, it takes only 1 second to load the Netflix interface against the 10 seconds previously.
• With the help of NodeJS, Netflix can integrate microservices seamlessly. It can also segregate vast pieces of information into tiny and detailed interfaces.
• The transition between frontend and backend is smooth today, thanks to NodeJS.

PayPal

PayPal is the leading online payments and transfer portal with over 200 million active user accounts. Until 2013, PayPal relied on Java but started facing difficulties due to its expanded user base. The front-end development could not accelerate its efficiency.

Java ate a lot of time in the name of development, which affected PayPal’s performance. PayPal soon switched to NodeJS, and here are the benefits it received:

• The response time has been reduced, leading to a load time that is reduced by 35%.
• A smaller developers’ team could build a NodeJS application in a concise amount of time.
• The number of user requests doubled.

LinkedIn

The third on the list of companies using NodeJS is LinkedIn. LinkedIn is the world’s biggest platform built to connect businesses and people. It focuses on employment networking. It has nearly 468 million users from over 200 countries.

LinkedIn made the switch from Ruby on Rails to Node, and the application runs nearly ten times faster than before. The Ruby app took longer load times, especially when there was a high traffic volume. After switching to NodeJS, here are the benefits that LinkedIn received:

• The client-server interactions improved when LinkedIn switched to NodeJS.
• The traffic capacity could double up, and the number of servers went down to just three from 33.

eBay

eBay is among the world’s largest marketplaces, offering business-to-business and consumer-to-consumer internet sales services. eBay has around 183 million active users and operates in 37 countries.

The major problems the industry leader faced were huge traffic and scalability. eBay engineers considered various solutions to handle these challenges and, after much thought, finally chose NodeJS.

“We had two primary requirements for the project. The first was to make the application as real-time as possible–i.e., maintain live connections with the server. The second was to orchestrate a huge number of eBay-specific services that display information on the page–i.e., handle I/O-bound operations. Now we have our NodeJS web service running in various stable environments. This whole deployment setup was quicker and simpler than we had expected.” said Senthil Padmanabhan, Principal Web Engineer at eBay.

Benefits eBay received after choosing NodeJS:

• Simplicity and speed
• Single threading
• Easy and seamless deployment
• Meeting the main requirement
• “Build once, and deploy everywhere.”

These companies are using custom NodeJS development services in one way or the other. They choose it over other frameworks for better scalability, performance, and speed.

Conclusion

NodeJS is a futuristic technology. It has proved to be the obvious choice for several big players that enjoy a vast user base. Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Medium, and several others have switched to NodeJS frameworks during their early days. Due to its advantages, all these companies have benefitted quite well. NodeJS can change the market and become the go-to for every company.

If you are a startup owner who wants to launch a unique product, choose NodeJS for backend development. As a NodeJS development company, Narola Infotech has the power to kickstart your NodeJS product development in full swing. Our team of skilled and dedicated developers combines their skills to deliver the most advanced NodeJS web development services to turn your idea into reality.