Node.js Digest #17: FreeJavaScript, State of JavaScript 2024, State of Node.js Performance, Express.js 2025
Node.js Digest #17 by Oleksandr Zinevych
Hey, community! Oleksandr Zinevych and the Avenga team here. After a short break during which we enjoyed a digital detox, welcome the first Node.js Digest of 2025.
Key Highlights
🔹 TC55 — Web Interoperable Server Runtimes — that's the name given to the new Ecma International committee that will work on standardizing specific server-side APIs.
🔹 TypeScript in Node.js will work by default starting with v23.6.0. Of course, this doesn't include type checking — that should still be a separate process. But the day when a TypeScript file can run in Node.js without any hacks or extra configuration has arrived.
🔹 A CVE identifier will soon be issued for all EOL versions of Node.js.
🔹 Hono is one of the most liked repositories on GitHub according to the annual JavaScript Rising Stars ranking.
🔹 Updates for Strapi, Puppeteer, Fastify, pnpm.
#FreeJavaScript
2025 has barely started, and the Deno vs Oracle showdown has a new round. For those who aren't up to speed — a few months ago, Deno decided to begin the process of freeing the JavaScript trademark from Oracle's ownership, since it hasn't been some Oracle-owned technology for a long time. It's an achievement of the vast developer and enthusiast community. Besides, Oracle has done practically nothing all these years to develop their so-called trademark.
Ryahn Dahl personally made a request proposing that Oracle voluntarily relinquish their rights to JavaScript. However, Oracle first asked for a deadline extension:
And then outright refused to voluntarily cancel JavaScript as a trademark. So now it will be necessary to provide more detailed proof of why JavaScript is a generic term and not Oracle's trademark.
An interesting 2025 awaits us for sure. So keep an eye out for which petitions you'll need to add your digital signatures to in order to free JavaScript from its shackles ;)
State of JavaScript 2024
The results were published remarkably fast compared to the 2023 results. In short, nothing super unexpected or radically new happened in the JavaScript world during 2024. Although most responses relate to front-end development, Node.js is traditionally the leader among JavaScript runtimes, significantly ahead of the browser.
Among Serverless solutions, compared to 2023, Deno and Azure Functions have become somewhat more widespread. It's worth noting that there were fewer responses this time, so I'm not sure if this is just a statistical margin of error.
Despite all the hype and countless stories about AI replacing us all soon, AI tools are still not very popular among JavaScript developers in their day-to-day work.
Among new JavaScript features that have a good chance of being adopted in 2025, everyone is most excited about Temporal and decorators. Perhaps these will make it to Node.js this year as well.
It's also worth checking out the Retention vs Usage chart, where you can find out whether it's worth migrating from your current library or tool to something newer.
You can explore the results in more detail at this link.
State of Node.js Performance
Rafael Gonzaga prepared a comprehensive report on what happened with Node.js performance throughout 2024, comparing versions 20 and 22 of the platform. Key improvements include: Buffer.compare() became 200% faster, and the Fetch API can handle 20% more requests per second. Additionally, the native Test runner also received significant performance improvements.
It's great that Node.js, which received considerable criticism with the release of Bun specifically around performance, is demonstrating such significant improvements in 2024.
Express.js's Ambitious Plans
In their blog, the Express.js team shared a retrospective of how 2024 went and where they plan to head in 2025. Last year was memorable because the seemingly fossilized Express.js not only showed signs of life but was fully resurrected. For 2025, the team has equally ambitious plans. With support from the Sovereign Tech Agency, they've put together a roadmap of what's planned.
Specifically, they plan to automate the release process and address technical debt, "zone" npm packages, improve performance, and implement modern open-source development practices across this legendary framework. The full list of planned work is available here. We can't wait ;)
Something to Read
🔹 Want to start using Deno in your projects but don't know where to begin? Niklas Metje made it a bit easier by putting together an entire course on Deno covering the key features worth paying attention to.
🔹 Long-time readers of our digests know about our love for real-world case studies from well-known product companies. This time it's a case from Slack about how they migrated from Jenkins to GitHub Actions.
🔹 And here's a new post on the Netflix blog where they talk about how they built their analytics collection.
🔹 How to properly clone objects and how to choose the right technique — in Phil Nash's blog.
🔹 Baselime shares how they migrated to Cloudflare and how much money they saved.
🔹 Have you heard of the 1 million rows challenge? It's about processing a 12GB file and aggregating the data in a specific way. Jackye Efendi shared in their blog how it can be implemented in Node.js.
🔹 Oleksii Trekhleb explains how the X.com home timeline is implemented and what lessons can be drawn from it.
🔹 A bit about managing context with AsyncLocalStorage in Trevo Lasn's blog.
🔹 Redis is gradually giving way to Valkey.
🔹 Steve Kinney published a straightforward intro to vector databases.
🔹 More about Deno and how to actually migrate a simple project from Node.js to the new dinosaur — on the LogRocket blog. Of course, if your project is massive, it won't be that simple, but the general idea stays the same.
🔹 Forgot about C++? Let me remind you. Specifically, about how you can parallelize Node.js using HPX.
Something to Watch
🔹 When he's not busy fighting Oracle, Ryahn Dahl continues to promote Deno everywhere he's invited :) This time at the GOTO Conference:
🔹 Advice from Matteo Collina is always valuable, so I recommend listening to one of the new JS Party podcast episodes:
JS Party 347: Nine pillars of great Node apps
🔹 Why MongoDB might be interesting for AI applications — Antonio Linares shares his thoughts:
MongoDB is the Nvidia of AI Databases
🔹 On their channel, the Supabase team talks about an authentication implementation example built with Hono, one of the hottest frameworks right now:
🔹 Julian Wood and Darko Mesaros discuss new features in AWS Lambda aimed at improving the developer experience with the service's web interface:
🔹 A new video on the Jordan has no Life channel, as always with humor about System Design:
Facebook TAO — Graphs at Scale | Distributed Systems Deep Dives With Ex-Google SWE
Library of the Month
This month I'd like to draw your attention to a very powerful logger for Node.js applications — Pino. If you need logging with great performance, flexibility, and rich out-of-the-box functionality, this library is for you ;)
That's all — the first digest of 2025 has come to an end. Ask questions, leave comments, and see you in February ;)
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