Node.js

Node.js enables JavaScript to run on the server. Its non-blocking I/O model makes it extremely efficient for applications that must handle many parallel connections.

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Core concept

Event-loop architecture: Node.js operates on a single thread, yet can scale massively through asynchronous processing. The huge npm ecosystem provides modules for virtually every conceivable use case.

Assessment

• Use case: Real-time applications (chat, collaboration), API gateways, and microservices.
• Advantage: The same language in frontend and backend (full-stack JS), rapid development, and low latency.
• Limitation: Less suited to compute-intensive (CPU-heavy) tasks such as image processing or complex cryptography on the main thread.

Related topics

• Event-Driven Architecture, the integration context for Node.js.
• TypeScript, the service comparison point for Node.js.
• Platform Engineering, the platform context for Node.js.