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Node.js vs Play: What are the differences?
Developers describe Node.js as "A platform built on Chrome's JavaScript runtime for easily building fast, scalable network applications". Node.js uses an event-driven, non-blocking I/O model that makes it lightweight and efficient, perfect for data-intensive real-time applications that run across distributed devices. On the other hand, Play is detailed as "The High Velocity Web Framework For Java and Scala". Play Framework makes it easy to build web applications with Java & Scala. Play is based on a lightweight, stateless, web-friendly architecture. Built on Akka, Play provides predictable and minimal resource consumption (CPU, memory, threads) for highly-scalable applications.
Node.js and Play belong to "Frameworks (Full Stack)" category of the tech stack.
"Npm", "Javascript" and "Great libraries" are the key factors why developers consider Node.js; whereas "Scala", "Web-friendly architecture" and "Built on akka" are the primary reasons why Play is favored.
Node.js and Play are both open source tools. Node.js with 35.5K GitHub stars and 7.78K forks on GitHub appears to be more popular than Play with 11.2K GitHub stars and 3.75K GitHub forks.
According to the StackShare community, Node.js has a broader approval, being mentioned in 4055 company stacks & 3897 developers stacks; compared to Play, which is listed in 111 company stacks and 46 developer stacks.
We choose Next.js for our React framework because it's very minimal and has a very organized file structure. Also, it offers key features like zero setups, automatic server rendering and code splitting, typescript support. Our app requires some loading time to process the video, server-side rendering will allow our website to display faster than client-side rending.
We actually initially wrote a lot of networking code in Kotlin but the complexities involved prompted us to try and compile NodeJS for Android and port over all the networking logic to Node and communicate with node over the Java Native Interface.
This turned out to be a great decision considering our battery usage fell by 40% and rate of development increased by a factor of 2.
As a small team, we wanted to pick the framework which allowed us to move quickly. There's no option better than Rails. Not having to solve the fundamentals means we can more quickly build our feature set. No other framework can beat ActiveRecord in terms of integration & ease-of use. To top it all of, there's a lot of attention paid to security in the framework, making almost everything safe-by-default.
Pros of Node.js
- Npm1.4K
- Javascript1.3K
- Great libraries1.1K
- High-performance1K
- Open source789
- Great for apis477
- Asynchronous467
- Great community414
- Great for realtime apps385
- Great for command line utilities290
- Node Modules77
- Websockets75
- Uber Simple65
- Great modularity53
- Allows us to reuse code in the frontend53
- Easy to start38
- Great for Data Streaming33
- Realtime29
- Awesome25
- Non blocking IO23
- Can be used as a proxy16
- High performance, open source, scalable15
- Non-blocking and modular14
- Easy and Fun13
- Same lang as AngularJS12
- Easy and powerful11
- Future of BackEnd10
- Fast9
- Cross platform8
- Scalability8
- Mean Stack6
- Fullstack6
- Simple6
- Easy concurrency5
- Great for webapps5
- Easy to use and fast and goes well with JSONdb's4
- Friendly4
- React4
- Fast, simple code and async4
- Typescript4
- Its amazingly fast and scalable3
- Isomorphic coolness3
- Great speed3
- Scalable3
- Control everything3
- Fast development3
- One language, end-to-end2
- Scales, fast, simple, great community, npm, express2
- TypeScript Support2
- Easy to learn2
- Easy to use2
- It's fast2
- Less boilerplate code2
- Blazing fast2
- Not Python2
- Performant and fast prototyping2
- Sooper easy for the Backend connectivity2
- Great community2
- Easy1
- Lovely1
- Event Driven0
- Javascript20
Pros of Play
- Scala78
- Built on akka55
- Web-friendly architecture55
- Stateless50
- High-scalable47
- Fast46
- Open source39
- Java34
- High velocity27
- Fun24
- Lightweight9
- Non-blocking io8
- Developer friendly5
- Simple template engine5
- Scalability4
- Pure love3
- Resource efficient2
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Cons of Node.js
- Bound to a single CPU46
- New framework every day37
- Lots of terrible examples on the internet33
- Asynchronous programming is the worst28
- Callback22
- Javascript16
- Dependency based on GitHub11
- Dependency hell10
- Low computational power10
- Can block whole server easily7
- Callback functions may not fire on expected sequence6
- Very very Slow6
- Unneeded over complication3
- Breaking updates3
- Unstable3
- No standard approach1
Cons of Play
- Evolves fast, keep up with releases3
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What is Node.js?
What is Play?
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