Ever wondered why MERN stack development is becoming so popular amongst businesses in USA? Not only the new developments, but even old legacy applications are being migrated to MERN stack at a significant rate.
The popularity and trust over MERN Stack in such a short time after launch may be surprising for many but it is not a mere trend. There are several reasons why MERN stack Development in USA is going at a fast pace.
Here we will discuss the advantages that MERN stack, which stands for MongoDB, Express.js, ReactJS, and Node.js development, provides over other popular and trusted technology stacks.
Full Stack JavaScript
MERN stack enables developers to build full-stack applications using JavaScript, which streamlines development, reduces context switching, and fosters code reuse. Developers with JavaScript skills can work on both frontend and backend components without needing to learn additional languages or technologies.
Following are a few key reasons why development becomes smooth and fast when developers use JS for client-side and server-side programming.
– Using JavaScript on both the client and server sides enables developers to maintain consistency across the entire application stack. This reduces the cognitive overhead associated with switching between different programming languages and frameworks, leading to a more streamlined development process.
– With a unified language across the stack, developers can reuse code components between the client and server sides, leading to increased efficiency and reduced development time. Functions, data models, and utility modules can be shared seamlessly between frontend and backend components.
– JavaScript allows developers to write code that can run on both the client and server sides. This approach offers benefits such as improved performance, better SEO, and enhanced user experience through server-side rendering of initial page content.
– Validating user input, and data consistency, is essential for building robust web applications. Use of JavaScript on both client and server sides, allows for consistent data validation logic to be implemented, ensuring that data is validated both client-side (for immediate feedback to users) and server-side (for security and data integrity).
– JavaScript uses JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) for data interchange. This simplifies the process of sending and receiving data between different components of the application stack, leading to more efficient communication and reduced development complexity.
– JavaScript runtime environments offer non-blocking, event-driven I/O operations, which can lead to improved performance and scalability for server-side code. Additionally, using JavaScript on the client side allows for the efficient execution of complex logic within web browsers, enhancing the overall performance of web applications.
Node.JS
Node.js integral part of the MERN stack. This new addition to technology stack comes with features that make it a popular tech stack for development. NodeJS allows developers to use JavaScript for both frontend and backend development, enabling full-stack JavaScript development. This reduces the complexity of switching between different programming languages and fosters code reuse between client-side and server-side components.
– Non-blocking I/O: Node.js uses an event-driven, non-blocking I/O model. This architecture allows Node.js to handle a large number of simultaneous connections without blocking, leading to high performance and scalability for backend applications.
– Asynchronous Programming: Node.js utilizes asynchronous programming techniques, such as callbacks, Promises, and async/await, to handle I/O operations. Asynchronous programming performs the execution of tasks in parallel like fetching data from databases or making HTTP requests, without blocking the execution of other code.
– NPM Ecosystem: Node.js comes with npm (Node Package Manager). Npm provides access to a vast array of open-source libraries and frameworks, to leverage existing solutions for common tasks and accelerate development.
– Scalability: Node.js is inherently scalable due to its non-blocking, event-driven architecture. It is well-suited for building microservices, real-time applications, and high-traffic web services that require horizontal scalability. Additionally, it can be deployed in containerized environments, such as Docker, and managed with orchestration tools like Kubernetes.
– Performance: Node.js offers excellent performance, low response times, and improved overall performance compared to traditional server-side technologies.
– Cross-platform Compatibility: Node.js is cross-platform. It can run on various operating systems, including Linux, macOS, and Windows. This flexibility makes it highly versatile and adaptable to different deployment scenarios.
Express.JS
Express.js is the backbone of the backend layer in the MERN stack. It provides essential features for routing, middleware support, database integration, security, and extensibility. Its simplicity, flexibility, and performance contribute to making the MERN stack a preferable choice for modern web application development.
– Server-side Routing: Express.js provides a simple and intuitive way to define routes for handling HTTP requests. Developers can easily define routes for different endpoints, such as handling API requests or serving static files, making it easier to create RESTful APIs and web applications.
– Middleware Support: Express.js offers robust middleware support. Middleware functions can intercept and modify incoming requests, perform authentication and authorization checks, handle error handling, and more, providing flexibility and control over the request-handling process.
– Integration with MongoDB: Express.js integrates seamlessly with MongoDB. Use of libraries like Mongoose.js to define data models, perform CRUD operations, and interact with MongoDB databases within their Express.js applications, allowing smooth and safe data manipulation and safety.
– Middleware for CORS and Security: Express.js middleware can be used to implement Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) policies and security features such as HTTP headers for mitigating common web threats like XSS (Cross-Site Scripting) and CSRF (Cross-Site Request Forgery).
– Performance and Scalability: Express.js is lightweight and its design makes it high-performance and scalable. The non-blocking, event-driven architecture of Node.js, added to the streamlined nature of Express.js, enables MERN applications to handle high frequency of requests and scale effectively as the application grows.
ReactJS
React.js plays a significant role in the MERN stack as the frontend library. React.js empowers MERN to build dynamic, interactive, and scalable user interfaces by leveraging its component-based architecture, virtual DOM, declarative syntax, and rich ecosystem. Its compatibility with Node.js and Express.js, along with support for SSR, makes React.js an integral part of the MERN stack.
– Component-Based Architecture: Component-based architecture enables developers to build complex user interfaces by composing reusable and encapsulated components. It allows code reusability, maintainability, and scalability, making it easier to manage large-scale applications.
– Virtual DOM: DOM (Document Object Model) is a lightweight in-memory representation of the actual DOM, to efficiently manage UI updates and optimize performance. Virtual DOM in React.js ensures fast and responsive user interfaces, enhancing the overall user experience.
– Declarative Syntax: React.js employs a declarative syntax, allowing developers to describe how the UI should look and behave based on the application state. This approach simplifies UI development and maintains the codebase.
– Unidirectional Data Flow: In this data flows downward from parent components to child components via props. This architectural pattern ensures that the UI remains in sync with the underlying data.
– Server-Side Rendering (SSR): React.js allows to rendering of React components on the server and sending pre-rendered HTML to the client. This improves initial page load performance, SEO (Search Engine Optimization), and enables progressive enhancement for users with slower devices or limited JavaScript support.
– Integration with Node.js and Express.js**: React.js integrates seamlessly with Node.js and Express.js, the backend components of the MERN stack. The use of tools enables a streamlined development workflow and facilitates the development of universal JavaScript applications.
MongoDB
MongoDB has flexible document model, scalability, performance, expressive query language, schema-less design, JSON data format, and document-level atomicity. It is compatible with JavaScript-based technologies and integrates seamlessly with Node.js and Express.js.
– Flexible Document Model: MongoDB is a NoSQL database that uses a flexible document model, storing data in JSON-like documents instead of traditional rows and columns.
– Scalability and Performance: The horizontal scalability allows developers to distribute data across multiple servers or clusters to handle increasing data volumes and high concurrency. Additionally, support for features like sharding and replication makes it suitable for building scalable and high-performance applications.
– Expressive Query Language: MongoDB provides a powerful and expressive query language that supports a wide range of operations for querying and manipulating data. Developers can use MongoDB’s query language to perform complex queries, aggregations, and data transformations, enabling efficient data retrieval and processing within the MERN stack.
– Schema-less Design: Heterogenous data structures can be stored in the same collection without predefined schemas. This allows dynamic and agile development. This flexibility simplifies schema migrations, manages evolving data requirements, and reduces conflict between frontend and backend development.
– JSON Data Format: MongoDB stores data in a native JSON format, making it easy to work with JavaScript-based technologies like Node.js and React.js.
– Document-Level Atomicity: MongoDB provides document-level atomicity for write operations. This atomicity guarantees consistency and data integrity, even in highly concurrent environments. MERN stack is a unified technology stack that streamlines development and offers flexibility and scalability for building a wide range of web applications.
