Node.js Digest #9: Bundows, a Node.js film, paid Redis, V8 Sandbox
Hello, community! Oleksandr Zinevych is here, Engineering Director at Avenga. The latest Node.js digest is out now, so let's get right into the news! ???
Brief highlights
?? Deno v1.42 with a bunch of improvements to JSR.
?? April security upgrades for Node.js (the new website design makes reading even nicer).
??If you work with Edge, you've probably heard of the Hono framework, which I've mentioned in previous digests. This month, new versions of v4.2+ have been released with many exciting improvements.
??V8 has received significant security improvements for memory management. While it's more relevant for browsers at the moment, it's still interesting for both exploration and the Node.js community.
??Redis is changing its license. The team announced this on their blog; it's not the traditional open-source anymore.
??On April 4-5, Node Congress, one of the biggest Node.js conferences, took place. As always, there were many interesting talks from industry leaders. In a few weeks, you can watch the recordings on the GitNation portal, and we'll highlight the best ones in the next digest.
??Isaac Z. Schlueter, the creator of npm, and a group of other npm client developers have announced that they are working on something to solve all the problems of modern JavaScript package managers.
??RedwoodJS now supports React Server Components.
New design of the official Node.js website
Finally, Node.js has a user-friendly and trendy website ??????
The launch of the new version seems to have been timed to coincide with the documentary release. Although I don't spend much time on the Node.js website, it's nice to see the community working not only on the platform but also on such side projects as updating the website. Additionally, in their blog, the team shared more details about the redesign process (which is not the first time), the technologies used, the challenges they faced, and the results achieved. The article isn't too long, but it's interesting to see another example of open-source development.
Node.js documentary release
No memes are needed here. Finally, the world has seen the Node.js documentary, and I highly recommend that everyone working with this technology sets aside an evening and watch it:
It's very interesting to look back and see how the Node.js platform and its ecosystem evolved, how it nearly faded away, got a second wind, and much more — all from the people who developed it.
Npm isn't going away
The Node.js team confirmed that npm will remain a part of the Node.js bundle. After the news about the possible removal of the default npm package manager from the Node.js bundle shook the community and sparked a flurry of criticism, we can finally breathe a great sigh of relief and sleep like a baby. The notion that separating npm is not a priority right now has been registered (and merged) in the relevant PR.
Bundows (Bun 1.1)
It's been ages (actually, it has) since the last major release of Bun, and now the world has seen a new version 1.1, packed with all sorts of interesting innovations. Firstly, it's worth noting the way the team shares its news:
Even though you can sometimes tell that developers are reading from a teleprompter, I think presenting a release in this manner is really cool. It lets us see the people doing tremendous work rather than just reading a text version of release notes.
The Bun 1.1 release brings several exciting updates, including support for Windows, significant performance improvements, new APIs, testing mocks, and much more. Plus, screenshots showcase its remarkable performance compared to other platforms.
You can see the full list of updates here.
Winter is coming!
I don't know about you, my dear reader, but I'm still impressed by the Bun release, especially its amazing performance metrics, some of which either worked slightly differently in real examples or weren't too critical for developers. And now, there's a new contender for the fastest JavaScript execution environment — Winter.js. It's all written using Rust and SpiderMonkey. And, as always, they promise incredible performance:
Besides supporting the most popular frameworks and libraries, there's also Cloudflare API support. While the environment still needs testing and feedback from the community, the authors' commitment to focusing on Edge Deployment looks promising.
Node.js and performance
Rafael Gonzaga has released his second article, taking a retrospective look at what happened with Node.js in 2023. This time, he focuses on the performance of particular Node.js APIs, with another article about frameworks to be released separately in Rafael's blog.
The article features numerous interesting graphs showing how much the Node.js contributor team is concerned about performance and how they improve it from release to release. For instance, there's a graph illustrating the performance of http.Server and its improvements in Node.js 20.
In the article, you can find more details about many other metrics.
Must-read
??Raymond Camden discusses three recent Node.js innovations he's really enjoyed. What features do you like? Write in the comments ??
??In this article, you can find a quick example of using AWS Bedrock and Node.js.
??Astro continues to expand its ecosystem, and now they're introducing their new project — Astro DB. In the article, the developers share their inspiration from WordPress and the journey they undertook to release this project.
??After several years of discussions, V8 received memory management improvements, known as a sandbox. The article provides an interesting explanation of the motivation behind this feature and why it's important.
??It's always interesting and insightful to explore case studies from major companies. This time, Figma experts are sharing how they built their permissions system.
??If you haven't used worker threads and aren't quite sure what they are and how they work, Stanley Ulili provides clear answers to all these questions in his article.
??A story about why Jest isn't as fast as expected in some cases.
Must-see
??Matteo Collina reflects on whether Node.js is alive (spoiler: it's more alive than ever).
??Do you use GitHub Copilot? If so, it may be time to reconsider. Dreams of Code channel has a new video where the author shares their thoughts on why it's worth giving up Copilot.
??Astro now includes a database feature, too. Some thoughts on this, along with examples, are available on Theo's channel — t3.gg.
??The video on System Design is quite interesting, much like the channel itself, which focuses on this topic. In the video, the author discusses what to respond if you're asked about a distributed logging system at a System Design interview ???
??Here's another new artificial intelligence that is ready to completely replace us.
??You already know so much about Git, but there will definitely be something new that you haven't come across yet ???
??A quick course for Docker beginners in just 8 minutes. If you've worked with Docker, there's nothing new to learn, but it might be useful for those with little experience with this tool.
??Here is some info on the Effect toolkit for building complex solutions in TypeScript.
??It's a clickbait title, but it's intriguing to hear about the current state of the Serverless approach in 2024.
Library of the month
If you need something fast and based on WebSockets, take a look at the HyperExpress library. It's a standalone server that offers good performance, compatibility with Express, and a modest number of open issues on GitHub ??
If someone wants to deploy this to AWS Lambda or a similar platform, please don't do that. Remember, it's a web server ??
That's it for now. Leave comments, share the digest with friends, and ask questions if you have?
any. See you in the next releases! ??