Node.js Digest #23: New Deno, Free JavaScript, npm Under Attack Again, Cloudflare and HTTP Server

Hello, community! The Avenga team is here with our regular monthly digest of the most interesting news from the world of Node.js and everything related to server-side JavaScript. That's right — now we're also available in video format.

A Few More Quick News Items

Vercel now supports Express with zero additional configuration.

The annual State of JS 2025 survey has launched. I haven't completed it yet myself, but I definitely will, and I encourage you to do the same ;)

Something to Read

Flavio Copes has updated — or rather, rewritten — his Node.js Handbook to meet the needs of 2025, which already features Node.js v22.

If we're talking about books and you want something more detailed and challenging, here's a great initiative from Ishtmeet Singh, where the author promises plenty of depth on how Node.js works.

To vibe or not to vibe? Birgitta Bockeler tries to answer this question in her article. Spoiler: the decision is yours, but the article describes an approach to making that decision with minimal risk.

Liran Tal explains how to set up a proper local development environment so that no supply chain attack can scare you.

Did you know how to properly prepare for refactoring? If not, Franco Fernando talks about it in his article.

The LogRocket blog explains why TypeScript v5.9 is worth paying attention to, and why it's worth upgrading.

James M Snell describes the tremendous amount of work the Cloudflare team has done to improve Node.js compatibility.

An excellent article on the Bun blog about what happens under the hood of bun install. As always, they take shots at our (and my) beloved Node.js, but the article doesn't suffer for it.

GitHub strikes back — specifically, in response to the unprecedented supply chain attacks this month.

Matt Smith on which standard array methods are safe and don't mutate the original array.

Have you heard about disaggregation in cloud databases? If not, now is a great opportunity to learn more.

On working with BigInt by Jonathan Frere.

Things are different in Deno. You can read about how this runtime fights npm issues here.

Something to Watch

Andrew Schmelyun on how he scaled his web application that accidentally went viral in one of his videos:

When was the last time you did some reverse engineering? And do you know why it can be useful and necessary? In Node.js it might be less common, but if you work with other languages, it's quite a widespread practice.

Google recently released a new language, and on the Awesome channel you can get a quick overview of the advantages of this new language.

If you're preparing for a System Design interview, or just curious to hear something on the topic, here's a great video about Data Modeling — specifically in the context of System Design interviews and preparation:

Sasha Greif shares his thoughts on trends in JavaScript development. Who better to talk about this topic than the author of the State of smth surveys himself:

I somehow missed that videos from the dotJS conference were released, so when you have time for a coffee break, check out these videos:

Updates/Releases

Runtimes: Node.js v24.9.0, Node.js v22.20.0, Bun v1.2.23.

Frameworks: Fresh v2.0, Fastify v5.6.0.

Libraries: Apollo Client v4.0, Undici v7.16.0, Jsdom v27.0.0, Serverless-http v4.0.0.

A Few More Interesting Things

In my opinion, all technical articles from Netflix about how they built something deserve attention, so read a bit about the technical details of how everything works on the inside.

Cloudflare explains why they had issues with some services and what they'll be doing to prevent it from happening again.

MCP server is now in Google Chrome.

To Stay on Top of the Memes