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Web Development ​

The earliest software ran on mainframes, with users logging in via "dumb terminals" to run applications. As personal computers became popular, software began to run primarily on desktops, while database software operated on servers, leading to the Client/Server (CS) architecture.

With the rise of the internet, it became clear that CS architecture was not suitable for web applications. The main reason was that web applications require rapid modifications and upgrades, while CS architecture necessitates updating each client application individually. This led to the emergence of the Browser/Server (BS) model, where clients only need a browser. Application logic and data reside on the server, allowing browsers to request and display web pages to users.

Web pages are highly interactive. Since they are created using HTML, which has strong presentation capabilities, clients can access new versions without any deployment after server-side upgrades. As a result, the BS architecture quickly gained popularity.

Today, except for heavyweight software like Office and Photoshop, most applications are offered in web form. Services such as news, blogs, and social media provided by platforms like Sina are examples of web applications.

Web application development has become a crucial part of software development, evolving through several stages:

  1. Static Web Pages: Initially created by directly editing HTML files. Any changes required editing the HTML source again, leading to static web pages.

  2. CGI: Static web pages couldn’t handle user interactions, such as processing data from a registration form. The Common Gateway Interface (CGI), typically written in C/C++, emerged to handle dynamic data.

  3. ASP/JSP/PHP: As web applications frequently changed, using low-level languages like C/C++ became impractical. Scripting languages, due to their higher development efficiency and tight integration with HTML, replaced CGI. ASP was Microsoft’s web development technology using VBScript, while JSP used Java, and PHP became a popular open-source scripting language.

  4. MVC: To improve maintainability, the Model-View-Controller (MVC) pattern was introduced to simplify web development. ASP evolved into ASP.Net, and numerous MVC frameworks emerged for JSP and PHP.

Currently, web development technologies are still rapidly evolving, with asynchronous development and new MVVM frontend techniques continuously emerging.

With Node.js bringing JavaScript to the server side, developers can now use it instead of other languages like PHP, Java, C#, Python, or Ruby for server-side programming.

Advantages of Using Node.js for Web Development ​

  1. Unified Language: Both frontend and backend developers can now write server-side code in JavaScript, simplifying the development process.

  2. No Language Switching: Using JavaScript on both sides eliminates the barrier of switching languages.

  3. High Performance: Node.js is inherently asynchronous, leading to high speed and efficiency.

In the few years since Node.js was introduced, numerous web frameworks, ORM frameworks, template engines, testing frameworks, and automation tools have emerged, making it overwhelming even for experienced JavaScript developers.

Common Web Frameworks ​

  • Express
  • Sails.js
  • Koa
  • Meteor
  • DerbyJS
  • Total.js
  • Restify

ORM Frameworks ​

  • Sequelize
  • ORM2
  • Bookshelf.js
  • Objection.js

Template Engines ​

  • Jade
  • EJS
  • Swig
  • Nunjucks
  • doT.js

Testing Frameworks ​

  • Mocha
  • Expresso
  • Unit.js
  • Karma

Build Tools ​

  • Grunt
  • Gulp
  • Webpack

As of now, over 300,000 open-source Node.js modules have been published on npm.

If you have difficulty choosing, don’t worry—this tutorial will guide you through the process step by step!