Node.js is the everyman’s platform for developing apps. It’s JavaScript on the server. It’s relatively easy to learn and it’s immensely popular. Now Amazon Web Services (AWS) has released the Node.js SDK for general availability.
According to a blog post, AWS has added a number of features since the preview release in December. These new additions that developers can use include bound parameters, streams, IAM roles for EC2 instances, version locking, and proxies. According to AWS, the SDK helps take the complexity out of coding by providing JavaScript objects for AWS services including Amazon S3, Amazon EC2, DynamoDB, and Amazon SWF.
According to AWS, Node.js is known for its event-driven, non-blocking I/O model to allow applications to scale while keeping from having to deal with threads, polling, timeouts, and event loops. This makes it immensely popular. Game developers in particular have found it effective as Amazon CTO Wener Vogels explained in a post he wrote in March when AWS offered Node.js on Elastic Beanstalk. According to Vogels, Elastic Beanstalk “automates the provisioning, monitoring, and configuration of many underlying AWS resources such as Elastic Load Balancing, Auto Scaling, and EC2.” He said that developers he talks to use Node.js for its ability to keep multiple concurrent connections with low latency. Uber, Voxer and enterprise startups such as Datahero all use Node.js.
AWS is one of several cloud providers that offers support for Node.js. Joyent is the corporate steward for the platform. Windows Azure is also a big supporter. Rackspace supports it. In March, Microsoft offered an open-source contribution that uses the Windows Azure Service Bus to provide scale out support for real-time Node.js applications.
General availability of Node.js on AWS shows how much momentum it is getting with app developers. That acceptance is sure to increase as more people learn the skill and art of programming.