The original design model of the web is similar to the way that mainframes worked in the 1970s. Both old-school dumb terminals, such as the IBM 3270, and web browsers, follow a request-response paradigm. The user sends a request and the far-off computer sends a response screen. While web browsers can show more complex information than old-school dumb terminals, the interaction pattern in both cases is a back and forth of user requests, each resulting in a screen of data sent by the server screen after screen or, in the case of web browsers, page after page.
In case you're wondering what this history lesson is about, that request-response paradigm is evident in the Node.js HTTP Server API, as shown in the following code:
http.createServer(function (request, response) { ... handle request }).listen();
The paradigm couldn't be more explicit than this. The request and the response are right there.
The first web browsers were an advancement...