[Solved] Node.js the beginning what is the point? [closed]


You might find it very helpful to take the time to watch one of Ryan Dahl’s talks about why he created node.

In answer to your questions:

  • Is it the same as C# running in IIS?

No, because in that case, IIS is providing all kinds of web-server like services. In Node, your app is the server. For example, with IIS/C#, your C# wouldn’t need to worry about serving up (e.g.) static image files. With Node, your node app needs to take care of that. As a practical matter, you will use a framework to do this. Connect, which underlies Express, is a framework that takes care of most of the things you would normally expect your web server or container to take care of for you.

  • Can you install on GoDaddy?

My understanding with respect to GoDaddy would be ‘no’ but there are a variety of hosting options dedicated to node, and you can also just get a ‘plain’ virtual machine and install node. Heroku, Joyent, Nodejitsu are probably the “big brands” in specialized node.js hosting, although there are others. And obviously there are no shortage of places where you can just get a linux VM in the cloud. I personally like Digital Ocean for plain basic VMs.

  • Is it good to learn and is it easy?

This is probably a reason you are getting downvotes, in addition to an apparent lack of research about Node’s ‘point,’ since it is very much an opinion-based question. Personally I found it easy enough to get the hang of. Having said that, it’s “evented” or many would say “event-driven” and single-threaded nature do make it fundamentally different than technologies you may have used before. Again, you’ll get a sense of this if you watch one of Dahl’s talks. Javascript is also different from many common languages you may have used for the web, in that it is a functional language and rather than being class-based, Javascript uses prototypal inheritance.

  • Role of Express

Express, which I made mention of earlier as well as being built on/with Connect, is the most common base framework for developing apps. It provides a number of services so you don’t have to reinvent the wheel yourself and also provides an organizing philosophy to your app.

Hope this helps some. Watch a couple of the videos.

solved Node.js the beginning what is the point? [closed]