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

2.
Piotr Kowalski CTO @Brainhub

3.
Because it’s 2016!

4.
Because it’s 2016!

5.
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

6.
What is JavaScript?

7.
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!

8.
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?

9.
What about node.js?
● A V8 JavaScript engine
● Multiplatform
● Versatile
● Fast (in a runtime)
● Actively developed (current version 7.0.0)
● ...some more

10.
Asynchronous event loop with non-blocking I/O

11.
Asynchronous event loop with non-blocking I/O

12.
Node Package Manager
● Packages count: 344694
(as for today)
● Actively developed

13.
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?

14.
Fast prototyping and pivoting

15.
Scalability
● Horizontally scalable
● Since it runs a process it can be easily ran on multiple machines and load
balanced
● Thin runtime environment

16.
One can build a desktop app
● Electron
● NW.js
● APPjs

17.
Many frontend frameworks

18.
Isomorphic front- and backend
● Common codebase both for the backend and the frontend
● No more redundant code!

19.
WebSockets is a future of the Web (IMO)

20.
Node native extensions
One can write native modules/extensions to node.js (C/C++/Objective-C)

21.
One can run it even on a coffee machine

22.
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23.
How should I start?

24.
Read some books
https://github.com/getify/You-Dont-Know-JS

25.
Read some books
http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596517748.do

26.
Read some books
https://www.manning.com/books/secrets-of-the-jav
ascript-ninja

27.
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

28.
Choose some framework

29.
Play around and bring your ideas to life!

30.
Come to the next #devduck!