Node.js: Code Outside the Browser / Streams and Buffers

What are Streams?

🌊 Node.js Streams

Core idea: Streams let you process data piece by piece (in chunks) instead of waiting for the entire read/write to finish. You never have to hold the whole thing in memory at once.

🎥 Real-world analogy: Netflix and YouTube are "streaming" services because video is sent in chunks — you start watching before the full file has downloaded. Same idea, applied to any kind of data.

🌍 Streams aren't a Node-specific concept — it's a general CS idea. Node just implements it in its core modules.

✅ Why use streams?

  1. 💾 Memory efficient — read a chunk, process it, free it, repeat. No need to load everything at once.

  2. ⚡ Time efficient — start processing as soon as the first chunk arrives, instead of waiting for the whole thing.

Best for: large files (video, big datasets) and data arriving incrementally (network requests, uploads).