What Exactly is Node.js? A Guide for Beginners

If you're thinking about doing back-end development using JavaScript, you will hear the term ‘Node.js’. Node is often associated with developing powerful web servers.

Amazing Enyichi Agu

📌 Issue 33 / 06.09.2023


📄 Node v20.6.0 (Current) Released

As we teased last week, the latest Node release includes all-new built-in support for setting environment variables via .env files, so you may no longer have a need for dotenv, depending on your use case.

💡 If you just want to see a quick example of the .env feature in action, check this article.

JUAN JOSÉ AND THE NODE.JS TEAM


📄 My Node.js is a Bit Rusty..

The tale of how replacing a Node.js module with a native Rust module resulted in a 25x perf boost for Wix. Gal shows off the details of how it came about before concluding: “If something is too slow, profile it first, then encapsulate it, and then—perhaps—consider rewriting it in Rust.”

GAL SCHLEZINGER


❗️There are all sorts of bizarrely named npm packages being published, including things like @!-!- and --hepl, in an attempt to break tools and find new security vulnerabilities.


©️NODE.JS WEEKLY

🔥 JavaScript Sets are about to become a lot more useful with these 7 new methods:

.difference()
.intersection()
.symmetricDifference()
.union()
.isSubsetOf()
.isSupersetOf()
.isDisjointFrom()

Currently stage 3. Implemented in JavaScriptCore (Safari/webkit), being worked on in Chrome, and is totally polyfillable all the way back to ES3

Wes Bos

📌 Issue 34 / 07.09.2023


📄 Astro 3.0 Released: The All-in-One Web Framework

An increasingly popular, turbo-charged site generator comfortable with not just static sites, but dynamic and interactive ones too by way of its ‘islands’ approach.


🎉 RELEASES:

TypeScript 5.2 – Complete with the much awaited using declarations..

Node-RED 3.1 – The powerful low-code/visual programming environment gets some key improvements in its editor.

jq 1.7 – It's not JavaScript, but surely the best JSON processing tool to exist.

Ky 1.0 – Simple HTTP client based upon Fetch for browsers, Node & Deno.

jQuery 3.7.1 – Oh yes indeedy 🎉


©️JS WEEKLY

⚡️ IN BRIEF

- Version 1.0 of Bun, the notably fast JavaScriptCore-based JS runtime, is due to launch in the coming hours. There's a livestream and, we assume, a launch post due to land here very soon.

- In other 'alternative runtime news', the Deno team has announced native npm support on its Deno Deploy platform. They've also announced Deno KV is in open beta.

- Mozilla: "Over the course of the year Firefox has improved by around 40% on the Vue.js benchmark" – find out why.

- David Heinemeier Hansson, the creator of Ruby on Rails, announced that they're dropping TypeScript from Turbo (a library commonly used with Rails) in favor of plain old JavaScript. Social media drama ensued.

- What's going on with the Gatsby React framework? Folks are noticing there's not a lot going on with it lately and that 🐦 Netlify layoffs had a big impact. Netlify does, however, say 🐦 updates are coming.

- GitHub has made changes to its homepage feeds. Quite a few people are unhappy about it, though.

- "The CSS-in-JS sector has plateaued," says the latest State of CSS survey.

- What's new in Svelte as of September 2023? Quite a lot.

Wow HTML 🦈

We've hit another fantastic milestone! 🥳😎

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