Is Node.js production grade?

Over the last year and a half or so when we started our journey into the world of microservices based, cloud native architecture design and developments I had been asked multiple times if Node.js was production grade, can it scale to production workloads in terms of being robust and reliable? So much so that at times I was looking back and asking the same thing to myself. Though I still have no prescriptive answer yet, I would like to pen down some thoughts over the same.

Honestly, for me being into web development technologies for over a decade, the choice looked biased to being able to run #JavaScript on server side. The choice came naturally as I had been working on SAP® Fiori for 4 years or so and prior to that on SAP NetWeaver™ Portals and WebDynpro before that. The sheer thought of being able to run server programs with JavaScript was delightful.

After spending a lot of time learning and evaluating frameworks around Node.js it appeared promising and thus began the journey of developments on Node.js. I chose expressjs as the framework to help with routing and middleware functions. With the #MEAN stack gaining popularity MongoDB was definitely a choice of database for consideration. However, having no schematic definition of an object was a concern for many in my hood so I decided to use mongoose as the ODM library for managing schema definitions.

So with #nodejs, #expressjs and #mongoose and a methodological approach to project structure and coding practices keeping the 12-factor-app principles in mind I was able to setup a bootstrap project which since then been used in multiple projects internally and refined over time[also running in production :)].

Still, today when someone asks me is Node.js production grade I say that it depends on the use case and requirement really and not just the language as such.

P.S. Not to sound too biased, we are also using a lot of #python and foraying into #GO.

Disclaimer: the views and opinions expressed above are solely derived from my personal experiences and does not represent my employers or anyone else’s.

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