Node.js Framework: 18 Reasons Developers Are Using It for Cloud, Mobile

By Darryl K. Taft | Posted 2012-08-22

Two-Thirds

Two-thirds of Americans access the Web through mobile devices, according to Engine Yard research.

Two-Thirds

Thirty-Four Percent

And 34 percent of the world's top 100 Websites are using HTML5.

Thirty-Four Percent

The Rise of the Real-Time Web

Engine Yard says the growth of mobile plus the popularity of HTML5 equals the rise of the real-time Web. And the real-time Web requires real-time technology, such as Node.js.

The Rise of the Real-Time Web

Event-Driven

Node.js is a development framework that uses an event-driven, non-blocking I/O.

Event-Driven

Built on JavaScript

Node.js is built on JavaScript to unify front-end and server-side architectures.

Built on JavaScript

High Performance

Node.js is ideal for high-performance, highly scalable, distributed real-time Web applications.

High Performance

GitHub Status

Node.js is the second-most-watched repository on the GitHub Web-based hosting service-second only to Bootstrap.

GitHub Status

Ruby on Rails

Node.js is more watched than Ruby on Rails on GitHub. Bootstrap is first, Node.js second, jQuery third and Rails fourth.

Ruby on Rails

Node Package Manager

Node Package Manager or NPM is a package manager and distribution system for Node.js. NPM has 12,000 modules and 3,800 active package authors.

Node Package Manager

LinkedIn is a prominent user of Node.js. On the server side, LinkedIn's entire mobile software stack is completely built in Node.js. The company went from running 15 servers with 15 instances on each physical machine to just four instances that can handle two times the traffic.

Walmart

Walmart re-engineered its mobile app to be powered by Node.js and pushed all its JavaScript processing to the server.

Walmart

eBay

eBay recently launched ql.io, a gateway for HTTP APIs, using Node.js as the runtime stack. eBay was able to tune a regular quality Ubuntu workstation to handle more than 120,000 active connections per Node.js process with each connection consuming about 2K of memory.

eBay