With more than 3.5 million users, the Node.js cross-platform runtime environment is one of the fastest growing platforms for web, IoT and enterprise app development. So popular in fact, that the Node.js Foundation today decided to release its first-ever survey on the state of the technology’s adoption.

One of the main findings is that Node.js and container technology go hand-in-hand, with 45 percent of the 1,760 developers surveyed reporting using them together. The survey reveals developer’s belief that Node.js and containers are ideal for developing and deploying microservices’ architectures, especially in the Internet of Things, where 58 percent of developers use Node.js alongside Docker.

The IoT is actually proving to be one of the most fertile arenas for Node.js’s growth. The survey shows that JavaScript and Node.js have effectively become the language and platform of choice for IoT developers, due to their suitability for “data intensive environments” that require non-disruptive parallel programming. All in all, a massive 96 percent of IoT developers said they use JavaScript, Node.js and frameworks like React for development.

This level of popularity means that Node.js is rapidly becoming a “universal” platform for developers. In addition to the inroads its made in IoT development, Node.js is also a popular choice for front-end and back-end development, with nearly 62 percent of developers using it for both. In addition, some 10 percent of developers said they’re using Node.js for front-end, back-end and IoT development.

But it’s not just developers, but also enterprises themselves that are eagerly embracing Node.js, led by companies such as Intel, PayPal, Go Daddy, and Capital One. That’s evidenced by the fact that 45 percent of Node.js users work with the Long Term Support release (v4) that’s designed for medium and large enterprises. In addition, some 80 percent of respondents who don’t use the enterprise grade version say they have “definite plans” to upgrade to v4, half of whom will do so later this year.

One last important finding of the survey shows that Node.js’s popularity is exploding among real-time, social networking and interactive game application developers, leading to the creation of a new stack. Called the “MEAN” stack, it’s able to handle the extreme scalability and multiple concurrent connections that these kind of applications demand. Node.js, in combination with MongoDB, Express, Angular.js, allows developers to tackle the needs of front end and back end development. Not surprisingly, all of these technologies were commonly used alongside Node.js. Express, cited the most, used by an average of 83% of developers.

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