Node.js vs Vert.x – Part 2 : A Detailed Investigation

What is It All About?

Before comparing any server frameworks or programming languages, it is crucial to give a short definition for each. Popular Node.js is a server side platform created on Google Chrome’s JavaScript Engine (so-called V8 Engine). More details can be found in its official documentation. We will just add that this is a comfortable open source, cross-platform runtime environment for creating and managing networking apps. It applies JavaScript, and can be run on OS X, Microsoft Windows, and Linux.

Vert.x is a server framework which is quickly emerging. Its biggest advantage in contrast to many other frameworkcs is high performance thanks to a great range of supported protocols. It is crucial to note that Vert.x is a project affected by Node.js. They both provide an event-based programming model. Despite these two platforms stand for the asynchronous API, there is still one question arising: which one is better?

To begin with, it is important to mention similarities. The APIs are pretty much the same for both platforms, because they both offer asynchronous API. Their philosophies also look similar, and that is because Vert.x was designed as a Java version of Node.js. But a lot has changed since then.

Node.js is based on JavaScript while Vert.x is developed through the usage of Java. Despite its relation to Node.js, but Vert.x has its own original philosophy and benefits. Thus, many users prefer this server framework to similar offers.

According to DZone, the overall picture looks like this today:

Vert.x (Polyglot JVM)
Node.js (JavaScript)
Netty (Java)
EventMachine (Ruby)
Twisted (Python)
LibEvent (C)
But we’ll be looking at the gap that exists between Node.js and Vert.x, trying to find out why most Java-developers choose the second one.

Article source: https://www.agriya.com/blog/2016/09/20/nodejs-vs-vertx-part2-detailed-investigation/