MERN Stack episode-1: Introduction

If we talk about MERN stack, we all now know it is one of the popular JavaScript stack. To build full stack web applications this is a time saver and provides easy ways to develop and deploy.

The MERN stack is consist of 4 technologies which are,

• MongoDB
• Express
• React
• Node.js

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Lets talk about these above mentioned technologies:

MongoDB:

image source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MongoDB

it is a widely used Database. It is NoSQL Database. When I am talking about NoSQL DB, I am meaning non-SQL databases. Or simply if I say the database is non-relational and doesn’t store data using relational tables . A NoSQL Database provides different mechanism for storing and retrieving data. It provides a storage format that is similar to JSON but named BSON.

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Express

It is nothing but a back end web framework. It is a framework for Node.js

It is helping hand for developing API’s and web applications. It’s free and open source software released under MIT license.

Different types of popular stack includes Express.js. such as,

• MERN
• MEVN
• MEAN

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React

Image source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/React_(JavaScript_library)

React is a JavaScript library to make UI( User Interface). It is used for front end. It is an open source JS library for creating efficient and flexible UI components.

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Node.js

image source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Node.js

One thing I should Make clear to Everyone that, there are certain misconceptions about NodeJS.

Many people thinks Node.js is a programming language but it is not a programming language. Many people might think that if Node.js is not a programming language then it might be a framework, which is also false.

Then what is Node.JS?

The answer is,

Node.js is a back-end JavaScript runtime environment. It runs on V8 engine. V8 engine is the JavaScript execution engine which compiles JavaScript source code to native machine code at runtime. It is used to execute JS code outside of a browser. It is an opensource and cross platform technology.

Some key features of Node.js:

• code execution is very fast
• Node.js library API’s are all asynchronous .
• Highly scalable even it is single threaded.
• Node.js applications do not buffer any data.
• Cross platform
• Opensource, MIT license

These are just some important features of many features provided by Node.JS

Some uses of Node.JS:

It has various uses, just naming few,

• Applications that are not CPU intensive.
• Utilities and Tools
• Data Streaming Applications
• Applications that are I/O bounded.
• Single Page Applications
• DIRT(Data Intensive Real-time) Applications
• Applications that are based on JSON APIs

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So, for introduction, I tried to make you familiar with the technologies that are making the MERN stack. I hope you got a good idea about MERN.

Reference:

• Geeks for Geeks MERN stack
• Geeks for Geeks: MongoDB
• Wikipedia: NoSQL
• Wikipedia: Express.JS
• Wikipedia: React
• Wikipedia: Node.js
• Tutorials point Node.js