Chapter 2Node.js Introduction
To date, there have been over ten different server-side implementations of JavaScript. While Node.js is the most successful, it is far from being the first. Engineers have spent considerable time and effort trying to make JavaScript run on a web server—but why? What is it about JavaScript that makes it so well-suited to being a server-side language? Ultimately, it boils down to two factors: familiarity and non-blocking asynchronous I/O.
Familiarity with JavaScript
Looking at GitHub usage, JavaScript is the prevailing language. As evidenced in Figure 2.1, the raw amount of JavaScript code continues to grow, outpacing all the other popular scripting languages available today. The graph represents the number of new ...
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