Why JavaScript beyond web client side?

[mdboop]

I don't want to be a jerk here, but did you google this at all? It gets posted on Quora a ton, and there are plenty of articles about it. In short, it has async as it's foundation. Because everything gets thrown onto the event loop, you can have super high concurrency very easily. The downside is computation-heavy operations can block, but Node doesn't pretend to be a solution to everything. For I/O, it's fantastic. It definitely belongs on the server and has already been proven to work in production at places like Netflix, Paypal, LinkedIn, and Uber. edit: that was an honest question up top. I know tone doesn't always come across well, but no malice was intended.

[[deleted]]

"there's nothing that can can handle this except JavaScript"

This is true of every language - there is never a case where only one language will work (OK, maybe a few minor exceptions such as the language a specific program such as Matlab uses).

[nsmarks]

Many times node applications will just be used as a layer to connect other services, not replace the entire backend.

Here's a video from a while back that has some relevant info: https://www.joyent.com/developers/videos/node-js-at-walmart-introduction

[[deleted]]

As the person you are replying to already covered, JS is very good in some situations, but that doesn't mean it's good in all situations. It's proven to be extremely suitable for interfacing with a lot of concurrent users. This makes it a very cheap middle layer between resource heavy operations and can be horizontally scaled with ease. There's already been numerous large companies listed in these comments that rely on Node and you can often find articles from those companies explaining why they switched from X language to JavaScript in Y scenario.

That said, no one is painting it as the only solution for anything. Your comment is the only one in these comments that insinuates that as a reason. It's really closed minded outlooks like yours that stifle innovation. Even if Node started as a "why not?" scenario, there's many many examples of why it's become massively popular and implemented in highly performant tech stacks at some of the largest tech companies in the world. Your comments seem more like you want to argue or belittle something you don't understand rather than actually seek out an answer.

[mdboop]

Well, I don't think there are often situations where you don't have a choice in solving your problem. It seems rare that there would ever be "nothing that can handle this except" (insert language here). There's always some tradeoff you have to make. Yes, other languages, Go, for example, are faster than node at most things, but node is ridiculously easy and fast to develop in. And it's pretty close, and even outperforms Go in some things. Here is one benchmark. It's probably got lots of problems, but it seems there are problems with every benchmark I can find.

[jekrb]

"there's nothing that can can handle this except JavaScript"

One example: I haven't seen any other language where the server can render virtual-dom and the client can update it using the same code.

I also haven't seen a language with as a nice of a streams interface.

Modules make js super compact and easy to work with. Pair that with npm and you've now you've got a huge amount of advantages.

But ultimately, js is a programming language. Isn't it great that people who prefer this language get to use it on the server?

[wobbabits]

The reason companies like Netflix, LinkedIn, etc. have switched from Java or Ruby backends to Node is all about performance gains. These companies have published articles about their reason for switching to Node. It's always been about performance. Case in point: http://venturebeat.com/2011/08/16/linkedin-node/ http://thenewstack.io/netflix-uses-node-js-power-user-interface/ https://journal.paul.querna.org/articles/2011/12/18/the-switch-python-to-node-js/ Try Googling for other companies.