~nodeweekly | Issue 552 - Node v23, and a proper hello to Express v5 (11)

Electron 33.0: The Cross-Platform Desktop App Framework — Electron drops a major release each two months. This one lands no major new features but jumps from Chromium 128 to 130, as well as V8 13.0, and Node 20.18.0.

Node v23.0.0 (Current) Released — Say hello to the newest release line of Node.js that gets all the cutting edge features first (Node 22 will soon become the active LTS release). v23 notably enables support for loading ES modules with require() by default, drops 32-bit Windows support, and node --run goes stable.

Introducing Express v5: The Official Express v5 Release Post! — We first spied the release of Express.js v5 over a month ago but now we get an official release post that tidies up a lot of loose ends and explains the broad plan. For now, v5 is considered a bleeding edge release with work still required in areas of security and overall process, but...

How Top-Level await Could Break Compatibility — Node 23 makes it possible to load ES modules transparently with require which is great, but.. only if the module being loaded isn’t using top-level await. One for package creators to think carefully about before backwards compatibility issues creep in!

The Story of the Hono Web Framework — Hono is a lightweight framework designed to run on any JavaScript runtime that's been picking up steam in the past year. With it, you can create an app in a Express-like style but run it on Cloudflare Workers, Deno, Bun, or Node.

Why I’m Skeptical of Rewriting JavaScript Tools in “Faster” Languages — Rewriting common JavaScript infrastructure / build tools in ‘faster’ languages like Rust, Zig or Go has become popular in the past few years, but is it really necessary, asks Nolan?

Best Testing Practices in Node.js — A quick-fire list of 15 worthwhile testing practices to use in order to write efficient, effective, and easy-to-maintain tests.

Javet 4.0: Embed Node and V8 in Java Apps — My JVM knowledge is poor enough that I haven't tried this yet, but it's a fascinating idea. The idea is you can use Node and V8 directly within the JVM, though platform support is mixed. GitHub repo.

Ultimate ExpressJS Starter — Yes, another one! This ‘batteries-included’ TypeScript-based Express.js boilerplate app does include a lot out of the box, though, particularly in the area of file uploading.

route-list: CLI Tool to Display Express/Koa/Hapi/Fastify Routes — If you’ve got a Node-based webapp and you want to see all of its endpoints in an elegant way, here’s an option.

WorkOS Enterprise Ready Conference — A one-day event in SF for product and engineering leaders shaping the future of enterprise SaaS. Speakers from OpenAI, Asana, Slack, Canva, Vanta, and more. Topics will include user identity, compliance, encryption, and logging — common features you need to support to sell to enterprises.