Question

I have been developing Web Applications using WAMP stack. I use javascript jQuery extensively and want to start learning node.js but what particular problems can node.js address that i cant do in php or what extra advantages would node.js provide me in respect to other server side languages. I am also interested in knowing its limitations to help me decide what and how much can be achieved using it.

Answer 1

A couple of thoughts on node.js vs PHP… some are just my opinions…

node.js Advantages

• Better evented/concurrency model for high traffic applications
• Code re-use between client/server
• Pretty much everything is open source and available on github
• Cleaner/bare bones, closer to the bare metal – only include what you need (my opinion)

node.js Disadvantages

• You will have to learn how to code in an evented way instead of a traditional linear way
• less frameworks/technologies available than PHP, many are less mature
• Less known/accepted if you are working on commercial/government projects (even though its very popular, PHP is more “acceptable” to a lot of end users/clients)
• Calculation intensive operations can block the server so you have to be a bit careful
• You will want to use a proxy server (nginx) if you set up a node.js server