Node.js

Recently I’ve fallen in love with node.js a web server written in JavaScript.

Ok it’s not really a web server, it makes IO functions available to JavaScript code in a completely non-blocking way! What does that mean? It means it’s incredibly fast. Yeah ok, how fast is incredibly fast I hear you saying. Right now in testing people are getting a node.js server that can handle 15,000 simultaneous comet requests. With some effort they think they can push that up to 100,000 simultaneous comet requests! The fastest web server that I know of is nginx which (according to WordPress) can handle 8,000 connections a second.

But it’s JavaScript you say, JavaScript isn’t fast. It must be witchcraft!

Kind of, node.js is using Google’s v8 engine, which is the fastest JavaScript available. (Some guys even made an NES emulator.) The other step is to get away from the threading system that most web servers use. It’s inefficient and wastes a lot of resources. If you want to know more, read up on the node.js website.

What do I plan on doing with node.js? Well so far I created an auto loader for help with developing. I’m also going to try my hand at a simple MVC framework for node.js. I’ve also been thinking about a Facebook game running off of node.js or something to watch and track changes on files at work. There are a lot of possibilities, most of which I haven’t even begun to scratch the surface. If you like JavaScript, I suggest you give node.js a try.