As presented at DevDuck #1 - JavaScript meetup for developers (www.devduck.pl) Why and How You Should Move from PHP to Node.js? Advantages and Disadvantages of both - PHP and Node.js. Everything what you need to know while changing your tech stack to Node.js

1. Why & How You Should Move
from PHP to Node.js

2. Piotr Kowalski CTO @Brainhub

4. Because it’s 2016!

5. Because it’s 2016!

6. Some thoughts about PHP (my personal selection)
● Got used to HTTP (rather request processing than application)
● Many PHPisms, inconsise API (past days)
● Many libraries from many sources
● Tremendous community
● Pretty adult

7. What is JavaScript?

8. Brief history
● Written in 10 (!) days of May 1995 (name: Mocha)
● Deployed in Netscape Navigator 2.0 in December same year
● Standarisation process since 1996 - ECMAScript
● Browser wars
● Many descendants - JScript, ActionScript and so on…
● NOT DEAD!

9. What is JavaScript not a.k.a. popular myths
● Given a web page, add me some animation magic
● Do me some AJAX magic
● Some stuff that cannot be kept tidy
● Works different on every browser
● You write $ then some CSSish selector, then you do stuff
● It’s only for the Web
● Some people call it node, but I have no idea why
● There are no classes, it’s not real OO language
● Everyone knows JavaScript, so why bother?

10. What about node.js?
● A V8 JavaScript engine
● Multiplatform
● Versatile
● Fast (in a runtime)
● Actively developed (current version 7.0.0)
● ...some more

12. Asynchronous event loop with non-blocking I/O

14. Asynchronous event loop with non-blocking I/O

15. Node Package Manager
● Packages count: 344694
(as for today)
● Actively developed

16. Realtime application > processing requests
● A web server works as a continuous process, doesn’t restart everytime a new
HTTP request is coming
● Can be stateless, but don’t have to be so
● We can get beyond the HTTP (WebSockets, HTTP2, SPDY and so on)
● Does a web server should only create response?

17. Fast prototyping and pivoting

18. Scalability
● Horizontally scalable
● Since it runs a process it can be easily ran on multiple machines and load
balanced
● Thin runtime environment

19. One can build a desktop app
● Electron
● NW.js
● APPjs

20. Many frontend frameworks

21. Isomorphic front- and backend
● Common codebase both for the backend and the frontend
● No more redundant code!

22. WebSockets is a future of the Web (IMO)

23. Node native extensions
One can write native modules/extensions to node.js (C/C++/Objective-C)

24. One can run it even on a coffee machine

26. <

27. How should I start?

29. Read some books
https://github.com/getify/You-Dont-Know-JS

30. Read some books
http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596517748.do

31. Read some books
https://www.manning.com/books/secrets-of-the-jav
ascript-ninja

32. Subscribe to some blogs/feeds
● http://www.echojs.com/
● https://davidwalsh.name/
● http://jstherightway.org/
● https://www.sitepoint.com/
● https://medium.com/@dan_abramov
● http://javascriptweekly.com

33. Choose some framework

34. Play around and bring your ideas to life!

35. Come to the next #devduck!