Getting Started

By the end of this course, we’ll be able to do the following:

• Use Node.js to build server-side JavaScript applications.
• Deepen our JavaScript knowledge to build better applications.
• Build web applications with Express and Socket.IO
• Use Node Package Manager (npm) to manage, build, and publish packages.

Prerequisites

An intermediate level of JavaScript knowledge is needed for this course.

Why Node.js?

Node.js has gained popularity in the industry for the many services it provides. Many big companies, such as Netflix, Uber, Paypal, Microsoft, and more, are using Node.js. It’s a popular choice for building microservice-oriented architectures.

Node.js is light, scalable, and fast. It uses a single-threaded non-blocking I/O model capable of processing multiple concurrent requests using asynchronous request handling. We’ll be expanding on these concepts as the course continues.Today, Node.js is supported by a large and active open-source community. Node Package Manager (npm) is the largest software registry in the world, hosting more than one million free open-source packages. Eleven million developers worldwide rely on npm’s publicly available and reusable modules.

Some of the most valuable npm modules today include Express.js and Socket.io, which we’ll explore in this course.