The World Of MEAN Stack

Over the years MEAN stack has grown as a popular choice among full stack developers. More and more developers joined the parade mainly because MEAN is an all JavaScript stack. Apart from the easier learning and transition curves, MEAN stack also offers many advantages over other developmental stacks making it one of the most preferred and used one in recent times.

MEAN stack is a compilation of JavaScript-based technologies used to develop dynamic web applications and hybrid mobile apps. MEAN denotes MongoDB, ExpressJS, AngularJS, and NodeJS, the technologies used in the stack. It has gained popularity because it allows developers to use the same language for frontend development as well as backend.

The MEAN Stack enables you to use JavaScript on both, front- and back-end. There are four main building blocks of every full-stack MEAN application:

• MongoDB: a schema-less (document-oriented) NoSQL database

• Express.js: a server-side JavaScript framework running on top of Node.js

• Angular: a browser-independent MVC JavaScript UI framework

• Nodejs: a server-side JavaScript run-time based upon Google’s V8 JavaScript engine

What makes MEAN stack popular among startups?

• Open Source

  All the MEAN stack components are open-source and regularly updated, and it allows the developers to customize the code based on their needs. Data transfer between frontend and backend happens through a JavaScript object which makes life easier for developers.
  

• NodeJS is Superfast

  mainly because it is built on Google’s V8 JIT-compiled JavaScript engine which compiles and executes JavaScript code into native machine code very quickly. Node.Js also uses asynchronous programming, making processes such as I/O to network connections, file system, and database execute very fast. This nature of Node.js is termed as non-blocking IO. It follows a modular architecture which makes it easier to extend additional capabilities in future.
  

• MongoDB is a NoSQL database

  inherently flexible when compared to other SQL databases. MongoDB makes it easy to make changes in the data model on the go and gives a lot of options to make the queries faster for specific result sets. For databases which need to handle huge volumes of data, MongoDB becomes an obvious choice if the system is going to be designed and built from scratch. As MongoDB stores different structured data in same document collection there is no need to worry about old data if there is any change in the data model during the development process.
  

• Supports MVC Architecture

  AngularJS uses MVC to organize applications and thereby supports rapid and parallel development. MVC model allows multiple programmers to work on the code simultaneously. One programmer can work on the controller to create business logic and one on the view. Hence the development time can be reduced to three times.
  

• Good community support

  AngularJS, NodeJS, ExpressJS, and MongoDB have a good user community and good adoption rate among the leading tech brands in the world including Google and Amazon.
  

• Uses JSON

  JSON is a JavaScript open standard file format which use human-readable text to transmit data objects. MEAN uses binary-JSON (BSON) for data everywhere, making it easier for reformatting data as it passes through different layers. MongoDB can store documents in a JSON format, ExpressJS can write queries in JSON and pass to NodeJS backend which understands JavaScript and seamlessly pass data to the AngularJS frontend.