In Node.js, are non-blocking constructs usually preferable to blocking ones?

Question

Is the following a statement of best practices in Node.js with regard to web applications? If not, how could it be improved?

The statement

The lifecycle of any web app has at least two phases: a setup phase, and a ready phase (when the application is ready to respond to requests.)

In the ready phase,

1. IO operations (disk access, database calls, etc.) should always be asynchronous/non-blocking.

2. Even operations that occur purely in memory should be asynchronous, when possible. This is especially true when the operations involve iteration, and especially^2 true when the upper limit on the number of iterations is unknown.

3. Synchronous/blocking operations should never be performed in response to a request.

In my opinion, the question of whether or not something is part of the best practices for developing in a certain programming language can be answered decisively based on experience and objective criteria.

Answer 1

The answer as someone who has written a significant amount of node.js code at a professional level is yes. As a JavaScript implementation there is no notion of a thread in Node.js. All IO operations are therefore asynchronous. While many of the common node lower level api's do provide an xxxSync variant using them is not preferred and can cause noticeable performance problems, even under very low load, and development conditions.

With regard to your comment about in memory operations. No in memory operations are truly asynchronous. While it is common to reuse the callback pattern when implementing long lived functions this is more a convention than anything else. In order for a function to be asynchronous it must release it's hold on the processor. In standard languages a system call blocks, meaning that although the process is no longer in charge of the processor, and the process itself is in wait state, other parts of the same program cannot be executed. In node asynchronous callbacks perform the same task that threads do in most languages by allowing the program to proceed although one of it's operations is in wait state.

Long story short, always use async when possible but understand the difference between using the callback pattern and using an actual async operation while they often look identical in the code they are drastically different. Misunderstanding the difference can cause some real headaches for people new to the language.

Answer 2

I respond not by experience, but because of what I have read a lot of time in blogs of node js competent developpers : Yes these are good rules since it seems all whom have passed performance test agree that blocking calls are the main cause of performance dropping.

There is an exemple but i've read a least twelve agreeing with when looking for information about node js.