Become A Web Developer With NodeJS: The Blueprint To A Successful Career

If you’re a coder or developer, chances are that you already know about NodeJS or Node.js. It’s a JavaScript runtime that’s built on Chrome’s V8 JavaScript engine and uses an event-specific, non-blocking I/O model, which is why it’s lightweight and efficient. On the off chance you’re new to NodeJS though, let’s break that down for you. Node’s programming model is one of the primary reasons for its popularity. Because of its model, coders are able to subtract all the complex, error-prone concurrent programming issues that are associated with IO. Basically, you can get more IO scalability via its intuitive programming paradigm.

What’s the Big Deal About NodeJS?

What It’s Not

A lot of confusion around NodeJS for newbies stems from understanding exactly what it is. It’s not a web-server and doesn’t accomplish anything by itself. Unlike Apache, you can’t use config files to point it to your HTML files. NodeJS is just another way to execute code on your desktop, i.e. a JavaScript runtime.

Why It Became Popular

If you talk about NodeJS now, it’s nothing exciting or novel. In fact, it’s been around for eight years. But then, in a time dominated by Java, it was a game changer. At that time, web containers were everyone’s bane, your dependencies were still self-hosted and your build could have been Maven or Ant. Then, with the introduction of NodeJS, salvation was at hand. It enabled you to simply run your server and it would start almost instantly. It spelled out the end of interfaces, generics, and other ‘complex’ JVM dependencies.

Now, it also enjoys a vibrant community with open source libraries for pretty much anything and it runs on many platforms like Windows, Linux, Unix, and Mac OS X.

What NodeJS Is Mainly Used For

Because it’s a brilliant server-side platform for developing real-time applications, developers can use NodeJS servers to scale massively. You can effectively handle thousands of real-time requests without hardware and extra hosting services that cost astronomical amounts. Node-based applications are also fully compatible with cloud services and can be added or deleted automatically, thereby preventing application spikes in the event of a traffic surge. It’s used for projects like:

• Chats
• Games
• Video
• Big data streams without logic

It’s so powerful, fast, and scalable that even Netflix uses it to handle 15% of its global internet traffic.

Why You Should take up NodeJs training

If you’re not convinced already, here are a few more reasons why you should consider getting NodeJS training:

• Market Demand

Besides Netflix mentioned above, other global powerhouses like Uber, PayPal, and LinkedIn, all widely use NodeJS. If these huge brands are using it, then it’s obviously a popular technology already and something to keep in mind when you’re expanding your employability skill set and making career choices.

• It’s Easy to Learn

NodeJS is written in JavaScript, which as everyone knows, is one of the most popular and wide reaching programming languages. So, even if you're a junior JavaScript developer, it will take you less time and effort to pick it up.

• Full Stack

Ever wondered about the inception of full stack web development? You can give the credit to Node. To reiterate, full stack web development means a programmer who works on all aspects of the program, front-end, back-end, and database administration. Imagine the days before Node - full stack developers had to be adept in multiple languages.

• Vibrant Community

As mentioned above, NodeJS is an open source framework with an active global community, full of enthusiastic programmers who continuously contribute to its improvement. Not only will this make you feel more involved, but it makes learning easier and more fun for everyone!

How to Start Learning NodeJS

Have you made up your mind to take up the next step in advancing your career? Kudos! First, you can learn Javascript (since Node is written in Java). Once you understand the functions, module patterns, classes, promises, and callbacks, as well as capabilities of Strings, Numbers, Sets, and Maps, you can get trained formally in a NodeJS course. While you are getting trained, it’s important to keep in mind a few things:

• Understand non-blocking, which is the main feature in Node. This means understanding how I/O operations are performed asynchronously with lines of code adhering to a non-blocking pattern
• Learn the concept of an event loop. To delve further, there is a stack, a heap, and a queue. In a loop, the queue, when polled for the next message, encounters it and sends the callback for that message to be executed
• Learn global variables and how to use the libraries that come with NodeJS.