Node.js recently revamped its website. This article explains the story of how it was redesigned. The site has many converging use cases, thousands of pages, and is a daily resource to many. Developers iterated to create a revamped developer experience, clearer CI/CD feedback, and an approachable tech stack.

The Node.js Technical Steering Committee (TSC) has clarified that removing npm from the Node.js distribution is not a goal for the project. Node.js will continue to ship with a package manager (npm) for historical reasons and as the reference implementation for the npm registry.

The --experimental-strip-types flag in Node.js makes it possible to execute TypeScript files. While Node.js can transpile TypeScript source code into JavaScript source code, no type checking is performed during the transpilation process and types are discarded. Enum, namespaces, and other features are not supported as no transformations are performed.

Node.js addons are dynamic libraries crafted in low-level programming languages such as C, C++, or Rust, designed to be integrated into Node.js applications. These addons serve as a bridge between JavaScript and native code, enabling developers to harness system-level resources, enhance performance, and incorporate external native libraries into their JavaScript code. This integration allows for a more efficient execution of tasks that require heavy computation or direct system access. The primary reasons for utilizing Node.js addons include performance optimization, access to system resources, and the ability to integrate existing native libraries. JavaScript, while versatile, is not always the best choice for performance-critical tasks like image processing or real-time data handling. By offloading these tasks to native code, developers can achieve better efficiency. Additionally, Node.js operates within a sandboxed environment, limiting direct access to system resources. Addons circumvent this limitation by exposing low-level system calls and enabling multi-threaded operations. Furthermore, many well-established libraries are written in C/C++, and addons allow developers to leverage these without the need to rewrite them in JavaScript. To create a Node.js addon, developers typically use Node-API (N-API), which provides a stable interface for writing native code. N-API abstracts the differences between various Node.js versions and the underlying JavaScript engine, ensuring compatibility with future releases. The process of creating an addon involves several steps: implementing the core logic in a low-level language, binding it with N-API to expose native functions to JavaScript, compiling the native code into a binary file, and finally, requiring the compiled addon in a JavaScript application. A practical example of creating a Node.js addon is demonstrated through a simple string manipulation task, specifically reversing a string. The core logic is implemented in C++, where a function is defined to reverse the input string. This function is then exposed to JavaScript using N-API. The build process is configured using node-gyp, which compiles the C++ code into a .node file. Once compiled, the addon can be utilized in a Node.js application, showcasing how native code can be seamlessly integrated. In conclusion, Node.js addons offer a powerful mechanism for enhancing JavaScript applications by integrating native code. They provide significant performance benefits and access to system-level resources, making them an essential tool for developers working on performance-intensive applications, hardware interactions, or legacy library integrations.