Tech

Building Node.js Applications: A Look at What You Can Create

Node.js is a perfect option for many fields of business. Reliable and rock-solid, it can power financial technology, electronic commerce, video services, and even the Internet of Things

Node.js represents a big victory for the people who work on JavaScript. Created in 2009, it made the traditional client-side framework into an all-potent programming platform. This framework ultimately became a central approach for creating Isomorphic or Universal JavaScript.

Currently, you can utilize JavaScript for many front end tasks. More importantly, thanks to Node.js, the programming language covers the majority of your back end needs. Still, we don’t want to sugarcoat the overall image of the language. Node.js is perfect in some situations but detrimental in others. Here, you will receive an analysis of five application forms perfect for Node.js development. More importantly, we will provide a set of essential examples for you.

Electronic Commerce Platforms

A central demand for electronic commerce is reliability. Its applications must be rock-solid. They have to withstand tremendous pressures from the outside. Countless people typically browse the catalogs of such platforms and perform many complex actions associated with them. The event-based, non-blocking I/O approach central for Node.js is an essential match for the aforementioned demands. Want some great examples of platforms created based on the framework? Let’s take a look.

Groupon

Launched in 2008, the U.S.-based (Chicago, Illinois) platform currently has more than 40 million clients. Before 2013, the business used Ruby on Rails applications to maintain the major activities. As the practice has shown, they often were highly inefficient. To resolve the arising issues, stakeholders within the organization began analyzing various platforms. They ultimately believed that a rational solution was to concentrate on Node.js. Why? The reasons are rather simple. Firstly, they like the tremendous support capabilities: it has countless users. Secondly, Node.js is an easily expandable framework with tremendous productivity.

Today, the key engineers of Groupon are convinced that the programming language is perfect for the company. For example, as Sean McCullough claims, the business currently works with more than 50 thousand requests per minute. Nonetheless, no major issues occur in the processing work. Moreover, the overall capacity to handle various queries has increased tremendously.

Groupon’s case is an undoubted example of a great victory: Node.js made the company’s platform better for all involved people.

eBay

Founded in 1995 (San Jose, California), eBay currently has more than 150 million customers. It serves as the largest auction worldwide. Initially, the business concentrated on a Java-centric framework. Once the company had grown to a tremendous scale, the choice started to exhibit a negative role in the overall structure of eBay. Even though it had sufficient power for heavy loads, the language was difficult to scale. As a result, eBay decided to switch to Node.js. The key motivations for these changes included ease of development, aforementioned scalability, and a high level of productivity.

As Senthil Padmanabhan, the Vice President, Technical Fellow of the company, claims, the programmers had two main goals in the transition. Firstly, they tried to achieve real-time performance to provide the greatest response speed for the customers. Secondly, the developers’ goal was to achieve better integration of various input/output frameworks per user page. Node.js proved to be a success in both regards. As a result, after creating a back end platform for Groupon, eBay decided to transition towards a full-stack approach.

eBay is a company that will undoubtedly continue becoming bigger and bigger. Node.js can certainly match the tremendous growth of the business.

On-demand video services

Today, on-demand video companies are growing. They are bound to become a cornerstone of entertainment. The crucial element in this regard undoubtedly includes streaming of all kinds. Obviously, millions of people influence such platforms. The pressure they face is typically overwhelming. Thus, programmers need a  framework capable of matching the constant user load pressure. Node.js saves the day.

Let’s say a person seeks to watch recent series, such as Squid Game? They most likely will have to visit Netflix. Node.js can guarantee the comfort of steaming content in this case.

Netflix

Created in 1997 (the web-centric division appeared later, however), Netflix, a company launched in Scotts Valley, California, currently has more than 170 million viewers. Many of its shows earn hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue (the aforementioned Squid Game recently earned almost 900 million).

At first, Netflix based its service on a Java-centric back end and JavaScript front end platform. The company has ultimately encountered the aforementioned problems with scaling. More importantly, many issues arose regarding the development in two different languages. Code translation required too much time. In this light, Netflix decided to enable a Universal JavaScript development approach. Hence, instead of a Java back end, the company began to work on a Node.js-centric basis. Simultaneously, the front part concentrated on React. Access to many free programs and a chance to save time on coding enticed the business, prompting a transition.

As the Netflix Technology Blog notes, the company can now simultaneously render server-side and client-centric data. Regardless of the display place, Netflix applications are capable of providing similar information. Delays associated with the interaction between different parts of the website decreased significantly.

Netflix is yet another victory for the analyzed platform. The company has improved its programming regimen and created a powerful approach for overcoming increased user load. Consequently, customers get the best streaming services in the world.

Social Media/Networks

The key demand for social media applications is to be rock-solid and safe. After all, they store tremendous amounts of sensitive user data. For instance, personal messaging history represents a crucial piece of information that should not leak in any scenario. Another problem stems from user pressure. A strong social-centric website features millions and sometimes even billions of people. Therefore, to manage scalability, some strong technical methodology is crucial. We believe that Node.js perfectly represents the approach in question. It can expand both vertically and horizontally in the current conditions.

Four great instances of Node.js being used for social networking sites exist.

LinkedIn

Launched in 2002 (Mountain View, California, U.S.), the website is now among the greatest job-hunting platforms in the world. Almost 700 million people use it. At first, LinkedIn’s framework found its basis in Ruby on Rails. Similar to Java, however, this approach did not allow extending the data sources within the network properly. LinkedIn’s performance started to lag behind its competitors. Major problems arose with the transitioning of JSON and the mobile application in question. Consequently, the programming team of LinkedIn started to search for something different. It has found the things needed: Node.js turned out to be a long-awaited choice.

Kiran Prasad, the mobile engineering director of the company, claims that Node.js gave LinkedIn a 20-times advantage compared to Ruby. According to Prasad, the former platform can run some programs within milliseconds. Contrary to that, Ruby on Rails can take up to 30 seconds sometimes. Besides, the speed came at a lower memory-related cost. The individual also notes many other essential features. For example, he believes that Node.js is potent due to its widespread nature: many people know how to deal with JavaScript-like platforms, making recruitment a much simpler task than usual.

The company has managed to empower its business through the use of Node.js significantly. Indeed, the transition was not easy. Still, the overall outcome is an undoubted success story.

Trello

With an active user base beyond 20 million people, Trello, a company that launched in 2011 (New York City, New York, U.S.), is yet another success regarding Node.js. Trello’s back end frameworks completely stem from Node.js. Contrary to many other businesses in this list, Trello decided to transition towards Node.js from the beginning since it needed instant updates for many of the notifications on the main website. Even the initial prototype of the project came into being via Node.js. This approach offered the business in question significant versatility and sped up the updating process. Considering the user-centric approach of the business, this element was especially crucial. Trello could immediately respond to user demand.

Ultimately, Trello Blog offers nothing but shining praise for Node.js. It calls the framework potent and highlights its community for creating many strong addons.

Trello is among the greatest platforms for managing work in the modern world. One thing is certain: the business will never have problems with extending the scope of its services.

Medium

Medium, a company with more than 50 million clients, came into being in 2012 (San Francisco, California, U.S.). It is also a business that has decided to center internal programs on Node.js. The key servers of the company use the framework as their foundation. In this regard, the key advantage in question is the capability of sharing information both concerning server and client hardware. As for the existing drawbacks, one can easily disrupt them through the V8 engine. The company uses this approach to overcome the issues with event loops disruption.

As Dan Pupius, a representative of the business, claims, the company primarily capitalizes on, as mentioned previously, code transfer between different platforms.

Even though Node.js has created some challenges for Medium, it nonetheless represents the strongest platform to consider. Through it, the website has become the most robust blog framework in the world.

Twitter Lite

Twitter, a company launched in 2006 (San Francisco, California, U.S.), currently features more than 300 million users. Mobile applications of the business are some of the most well-known programs in the world. Still, they do not collapse under the outside pressure. What is the reason? The active use of Node.JS and JavaScript. Using these platforms, Twitter Lite consumes 40% less information than other applications. It is a great choice for various outdated Internet protocols. The discussed programming language has two functions: it must govern the user authorization and handle the display of the overall HTML application outline.

One of Twitter’s tech specialists, Nicolas Gallagher, has only positive things to say about the platform. For him, Node.js enabled a simple architecture that transitions into an exceptional speed of use. Twitter Lite requires significantly fewer resources than the desktop site.

In many ways, the success of Twitter’s mobile application stems from its use of Node.js.

Internet of Things

The interconnection of this technology and Node.js is a great story to consider. Regrettably, we don’t have enough space to provide all the vital details. The discussed integration certainly needs a separate article. Want more information? Here is material on the topic that covers all the issues extensively. Ultimately, we can note four major positives for IoT development that stem from Node.js:

  • High productivity levels;
  • The relative ease of integration;
  • Significant support through IoT-centric elements;
  • Rock-solid stability and efficiency.

Financial Technology

The growth of Internet-centric financial services is tremendous. What is the key demand for them? Reliability. An average economic technology application works with information that can’t leak. The leakage of financial data may lead to tremendous problems for clients. Node.js covers the presented demand. It is both rock-solid and secure. The free and open nature of Node.js is especially enticing. After all, countless developers monitor it for errors, significantly increasing the overall safety levels.

You have most probably used the famous instances of Node.js financial technology. Obviously, they include PayPal.

PayPal

Launched in 1998 (Palo Alto, California, U.S.), PayPal currently features countless users. It is a potent rival for traditional banking services. Daily, 200 million people perform some form of transaction on it. Still, PayPal never had any problems with payment. Why? Your guess is correct: Node.js. Significant user pressure, however, is only one of the concerns. The framework has also helped the company speed up development and program productivity. Before trying Node.js, PayPal ran a difficult combination of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript for the front end, and Java regarding its servers. Obviously, the development approach has created tremendous confusion within the programmer team. Even though the business had transitioned to Node.js slowly, the overall approach turned out to be a success story. Parallel creation of Node.js and Java programs has shown that the former framework has achieved a doubled productivity. More importantly, its code and files took up to 40% less space.

A perfect showcase concerning progress stems from the presented chart:

Taken from https://medium.com/paypal-engineering/node-js-at-paypal-4e2d1d08ce4f

As we can see, the reaction time for Node.js is over 30% faster than for Java. Besides, the framework can process up to 100% more queries.

Paypal blog ultimately shows that the business is highly satisfied with Node.js. After all, it helps regarding full-stack development based on JavaScript. This approach prevents organizational chaos. The coding team can quickly react to many of the user demands.

In the end, Node.js has significantly improved work for PayPal. Now, it can achieve tremendous levels of user satisfaction.

Conclusion

To summarize, Node.js is one of the best platforms for many types of Internet-centric businesses. Want to build a streaming or payment service? Use the services of 

web and mobile development company, and you will achieve success. Many large-scale projects have already confirmed the utter potency of the framework. We can understand why this has happened. Universal JavaScript development, which enables full-stack approaches, is a tremendous advantage. Why not use it today?

Ethan

Ethan is the founder, owner, and CEO of EntrepreneursBreak, a leading online resource for entrepreneurs and small business owners. With over a decade of experience in business and entrepreneurship, Ethan is passionate about helping others achieve their goals and reach their full potential.

Recent Posts

Mikhail Shelkov: A Visionary Philanthropist Transforming Education

Shelkov Mikhail, a prominent businessman and Forbes Top-30 entrepreneur, has had a career showing academic…

11 hours ago

5 Reasons Why Vitamin C Serum Is Good For Your Skin

In the domain of skincare, vitamin C serum has gained a reputation as an impressive…

12 hours ago

Crafting the Perfect Beverage Menu: Tips for Restaurants and Bars

In the fast-service restaurant world, being first and staying ahead on the latest technology trends…

14 hours ago

Beyond Beauty: Exploring The Motivations Behind Plastic Surgery

When a person chooses to undergo plastic surgery or even considers it, they are often…

14 hours ago

StoneBridge Experts Alert: Key Things to Consider Before You Start Trading CFDs

Trading CFDs is an attractive way to benefit from price changes of the assets without…

14 hours ago

Crafting the Perfect Beverage Menu: Tips for Restaurants and Bars

In the fast-service restaurant world, being first and staying ahead on the latest technology trends…

15 hours ago

This website uses cookies.