Node.js overview

As an asynchronous event-driven JavaScript runtime, Node.js is designed to build scalable network applications.

Node.js is similar in design to, and influenced by, systems like Ruby's Event Machine and Python's Twisted. Node.js takes the event model a bit further. It presents an event loop as a runtime construct instead of as a library. In other systems, there is always a blocking call to start the event-loop. Typically, behavior is defined through callbacks at the beginning of a script, and at the end a server is started through a blocking call like EventMachine::run(). In Node.js, there is no such start-the-event-loop call. Node.js simply enters the event loop after executing the input script. Node.js exits the event loop when there are no more callbacks to perform. This behavior is like browser JavaScript - the event loop is hidden from the user.

HTTP is a first-class citizen in Node.js, designed with streaming and low latency in mind. This makes Nodejs well suited for the foundation of a web library or framework.

Node.js being designed without threads doesn't mean you can't take advantage of multiple cores in your environment. Child processes can be spawned by using our child_process.fork() API, and are designed to be easy to communicate with. Built upon that same interface is the cluster module, which allows you to share sockets between processes to enable load balancing over your cores.

What’s new in version 24.11.1

Notable Changes

The known issue relating to Buffer.allocUnsafe incorrectly zero-filling buffers has now been addressed and now returns uninitialized memory as documented in the Buffer.allocUnsafe documentation.

Commits

Benchmark: improve cpu.sh for safety and usability (Nam Yooseong) #60162
Benchmark: add benchmark for leaf source text modules (Joyee Cheung) #60205
Benchmark: add vm.SourceTextModule benchmark (Joyee Cheung) #59396
Benchmark: use non-deprecated WriteUtf8V2 method (Michaël Zasso) #60173
Build: ibmi follow aix visibility (SRAVANI GUNDEPALLI) #60360
Build: use call command when calling python configure (Jacob Nichols) #60098
Build: build v8 with -fvisibility=hidden -fvisibility-inlines-hidden (Joyee Cheung) #56290
Build: remove V8_COMPRESS_POINTERS_IN_ISOLATE_CAGE defs (Joyee Cheung) #60296
Build, src: fix include paths for vtune files (Rahul) #59999
Crypto: update root certificates to NSS 3.116 (Node.js GitHub Bot) #59956
Deps: update Corepack to 0.34.2 (Node.js GitHub Bot) #60550
Deps: update Simdjson to 4.0.7 (Node.js GitHub Bot) #59883
Deps: update Corepack to 0.34.1 (Node.js GitHub Bot) #60314
Deps: update inspector_protocol to af7f5a8173fdbc29f0835ec94395932e328b (Node.js GitHub Bot) #60312
Deps: update Googletest to 279f847 (Node.js GitHub Bot) #60219
Deps: upgrade Npm to 11.6.2 (npm team) #60168
Doc: mention more codemods in deprecations.md (Augustin Mauroy) #60243
Doc: add missing CAA type to dns.resolveAny() & dnsPromises.resolveAny() (Jimmy Leung) #58899
Doc: use any for worker_threads.Worker 'error' event argument err (Jonas Geiler) #60300
Doc: update decorator documentation to reflect actual policy (Muhammad Salman Aziz) #60288
Doc: document wildcard supported by tools/test.py (Joyee Cheung) #60265

Full list of changes available here

Node.js for Mac

Node.js overview

What’s new in version 24.11.1

Notable Changes

Commits

Node.js for Mac

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