HTTP APIs
In the beginning, Node.js was created with the objective of replacing old web servers that used the traditional model of one thread per connection. In the thread-per-request model, the server keeps a port open, and when a new connection comes in, it uses a thread from the pool or creates a new one to execute the work the user asked for. All of the operations on the server side happen synchronously, which means that while a file is being read from disk or a record from the database, the thread sleeps. The following illustration depicts this model:
Figure 3.6: On the thread-per-request model, threads sleep while the I/O and other blocking operations happen
The problem with the thread-per-request model is that threads are expensive to create, and having them sleep while there's more work to do means a waste of resources. Another issue is that when the number of threads is higher than the number of CPUs, they start losing their most precious value...
