What are the Node.JS Advantages and Disadvantages?

Hardik Thakker

Founder & CEO

Published On: Jan 16, 2023

Node.js is a versatile and advantageous tool for developing dynamic web applications, with several advantages and disadvantages.

Node.js is a secure backend technology framework with JS applications’ boundaries and is designed explicitly for both frontend and backend servers. This proves to be an excellent choice in today’s web development marketplace.

In fact, every technology comes up with advantages and disadvantages. Right? This time we’ve come up with an article that depicts the Node.js advantages and disadvantages.

What is Node.js?

Node.js is an open-source runtime environment based on Chrome’s V8 JavaScript engine and written in JavaScript and C/C++. It’s used for server-side operations, bringing JavaScript programming to the backend to run Linux, Windows, and OS X applications.

As an open-source project, Node.js was sponsored by Joyent, a cloud computing and hosting solutions provider. The company invested in several other technologies, such as the Ruby on Rails development framework, and provided hosting services to Twitter and LinkedIn.

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What are the Node.js Advantages?

After exploring the basics of Node.js, it’s time to focus on Node.js advantages to make it eady for your backend development services.

1. Robust technology stack

   JavaScript is the leader among the most popular programming languages. In turn, Node.js is one such technology stack that has become a stand-alone name in the industry.

   As per the recent report by W3Techs, Node.js is used by 2.1% of all websites, at least 30 million.
   

   JavaScript is considered to be the leader among the most popular web application programming languages.

   Node.js is designed explicitly for the backend, but many leading businesses get all the pros of full-stack JavaScript development. Some of them include

   • Better code efficiency
   • Improves overall developer productivity
   • Code sharing and reusability
   • Application speed and performance
   • Easy knowledge-sharing platform
   • Multiple tools available for better flexibility

   Consequently, it brings more flexibility to your Node.js development team and plays an essential role in designing fast and reliable software. Moreover, you can efficiently start programming the server side with minimum effort and develop robust web app development solutions for your business needs.

   So, you can reuse the front and backend code by using the same language on both sides. And also, you can wrap it into modules and create new levels of abstraction smoothly.

2. Fast-processing for web-tasks

   Node.js is fast, as there are a couple of reasons behind it.

   For Node.js development, Chrome’s V8 Engine is utilized to compile functions written in JavaScript into machine code, which plays a vital role in enhancing the web applications’ performance.

   The below diagram depicts the conversion of Node.js into machine code.
   

   With the help of its Non-blocking Input/Output and asynchronous request handling functionality, Node.js allows you to quickly process concurrent requests even though JS is a single-threaded language.

   In addition, you must note that it works well only for heavy CPU-intensive tasks that are rare for web servers.

   Many custom software development companies switched technologies to developing Node.js applications and noticed significant improvements.

3. Rich ecosystem: Node.JS libraries and tools

   Node Package Manager (npm) is a default manager that typically serves as a marketplace for open-source JavaScript tools, which is essential in advancing this technology.

   You’ll be surprised to know that there are more than 1 million packages in the npm registry, about 42 thousand dedicated to Node.js alone, and over 10,000 new ones being published every week. So you can imagine the Node.js ecosystem is built with a rich feature set.

   97% of modern web applications consist of npm modules.

   With access to multiple free tools, there is a massive potential for using Node.js. Likewise, open-source software enjoys growing popularity as it allows you to build new solutions, reducing development costs and time to market.

4. Scalable technology for microservices

   Node.js is considered to be a lightweight technology tool, and using it for microservices architecture is one of the best choices.

   As described by Martin Fowler and James Lewis, Node.js is “an approach to developing a single application as a suite of small services, each running in its process and communicating with lightweight mechanisms, often an HTTP resource API.”

   Similarly, you can easily break the application logic into smaller modules and microservices rather than creating a single, large monolithic core, which enables better flexibility and lays the groundwork for further growth.

   As a result, adding more microservices on top of the existing ones is much easier than integrating additional features with the basic app functionality.

   With each microservice communicating with the database directly through streams, such architecture allows for better performance and speed of application. Moreover, two frameworks widely used for microservice architecture support a match made in heaven.

   Related Post: Top JavaScript Data Grid Libraries

5. Large developer community and gentle learning curve

   Node.js is one of the most popular web development frameworks in 2022 engineering technology with 47.12%. In fact, Express.JS is the most popular Node.js framework that is the fourth most common web technology with 22.99 percent of respondents using it.

   The below figure demonstrate that Node.js is today’s golden standard for web development.

   

   Companies that hire Node.js developers can efficiently solve any problem imaginable with a vibrant and thriving community. One of the reasons behind such popularity is that JS, along with Node, is easy and fun to learn.

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What are the Node.js Disadvantages?

After having a look at Node.js advantages, let’s highlight the list of Node.js disadvantages.

1. API in Node.js are Unstable

   APIs in Node.js development is not stable. So, it becomes quite challenging for Node.js developers to deal with the major complexities while writing programs that require stable APIs.

   Moreover, due to unstable API in Node.js development, you need to be ready to tackle an unfortunate situation like the migration process. In simple words, you need to pay attention even while migrating from one version of node.js to another, as the APIs keep changing.

2. Lacks Strong Library Support System

   Node.js is one such backend development framework that typically lacks a robust library support system. In simple words, we can say that you are not dependent on third-party libraries to help them with tasks that are not included in the Node.js core library.

   Moreover, with fewer documentation systems, it becomes quite difficult for you to search for relevant information that can be used in development.

3. Asynchronous Programming Model

   The asynchronous Programming Model plays a vital role in scaling your application to a large By adopting the asynchronous programming model; you can efficiently manage the entire Node.js application for your business needs.

   On the other hand, it becomes pretty challenging for business owners and developers to deal with the linear blocking I/O programming, creating a big hurdle for developing robust business applications.

   Apart from this, asynchronous programming makes your code more clumsy, and the programmers have to depend on the nested calls.

4. Less capable of processing CPU bound tasks

   Node.js is a JS runtime environment that can efficiently process CPU-intensive tasks but cannot handle particular tasks in a better way than the existing tools and frameworks.

   The primary reason behind it is that Node.js was originally designed to work on a single thread. So, you were allowed only to handle one request at a time.

   In case of any other requests, the existing implementations tend to queue them up, reducing the average performance.

5. Difficult to maintain code

   With its asynchronous nature, Node.js technology responds to multiple callbacks for your business web application. This function runs just after every task in the queue, safekeeping several queued tasks in the background that are still running.

   So, if you have multiple complex callbacks received at a time, this process is called Callback Hell. And that’s makes the code difficult to maintain.

Related Post: JavaScript Frameworks Popularity of 2022

Conclusion

To summarize, Node.js is the best backend framework for developing scalable and high-performing web applications for your business needs.

We’ve come across the list of Node.js advantages and disadvantages to clarify the vision of adopting Node.js as your primary backend technology. Still, if you find any challenges while selecting the backend framework, feel free to consult Albiorix.