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Technology: Node Builds Mind Share Among Web Developers
Javascript programmer and evangelist Douglas Crockford called JavaScript the most popular and also the most misunderstood programming language. Despite a decade of new web technologies designed to replace and do away with the problems of JavaScript, Javascript has survived. In fact JavaScript is recently enjoying a sort of renaissance of popularity.
One reason has been the widespread adoption of JavaScript-based JSON as a more trim and readable syntax, compared to XML, for exchanging data in text format. Another has been the success of the jQuery framework. And over the last couple of years, a JavaScript-based server development platform called Node.js has also surged in popularity — it’s commonly just referred to as ‘Node’.
Node is build on Google’s V8 JavaScript engine, and allows developers to easily write low-latency, distributed real-time applications. Complex development constructs like ‘threading’ don’t come into play when you’re coding in Node. Mike Amundsen, a developer for Layer 7 Technologies, is quoted by PCWorld saying that “Node modules do one thing and do it well. Node is meant to be fast. It’s optimized for the machine, not for the developer.” Some are saying that it’s rapid rise in popularity is following a path similar to that of Ruby on Rails.
Tom Hughes-Croucher said that “Node takes a language people know very well — Javascript — and makes it available to do server programming, as well.”
Bryan Cantrill, Joyent’s VP of engineering, told online magazine Venturebeat, that “We believe that Node.js is a programming mega-event on the scale of Java or Ruby on Rails. [It is] not merely a new way of expressing existing ideas, but rather a new way of thinking about how software systems should be built.”
