February 28, 2023

Back to the flow, Node.js v19.7.0, my technical principles and other Adventures in Nodeland

Hi Folks,

I’m writing these lines en route to the first on-site meeting with a company using Fastify and Platformatic. I’m excited that we are moving fast. In this edition, we cover quite a few things: first, I will be talking about an app that I love. Then, we cover the latest Node.js core release, finishing with new videos and articles.

We are also planning some big news for Platformatic. Subscribe to our newsletter at platformatic.dev or join our discord.

Thanks for reading!

My “centered” group - back to the flow

My daily companion for my deep focus task is Centered! It gives me great music and “nudges” whenever I distract myself! Check it out. It’s amazing. https://centered.app/g/back-to-the-flow?from=GX99EHO1DYaM7GFtjDtAKS8Keic2

Node.js v19.7.0, are we getting ready for 20.0.0?

Node.js v19.7.0 ships with a couple of new features:

• the test_runner add initial code coverage support, bringing the new node:test module one step closer to be ready for general use.
• we have a new URL parser to speed up all the critical paths: ada became a dependency of Node.js.

It also ships with undici v5.20.0, which fixes a lousy regression. This update also landed on v18.14.2.

You can find all the release notes at https://github.com/nodejs/node/releases/tag/v19.7.0.

Videos

This week I prepared a short video on my technical principles:

1. Put people first
2. Developer Experience is the key to productivity
3. Continuous Deployment, not burndown charts

Watch it on my Youtube channel.

I also streamed on Monday, producing the 11th video in the “Unscalable Queue” series: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwYA19LOpv8. In this video, we refactored the “Unscalable Queue System” test suite, eliminating quite a lot of duplication: https://github.com/platformatic/unscalable-queue-system/pull/32. We also fixed a bug in Platformatic: https://github.com/platformatic/platformatic/pull/711.

Modules releases

• find-my-way v7.5.0 adds support for multiple parametric nodes.
• @fastify/jwt v6.6.0 handle fast-jwt decode error properly.
• fast-json-stringify v5.6.0 brings many performance improvements and refactorings. v5.6.1 fixes the introduced regression. v5.6.2 fixes another regression that happened when large integers were specified.
• pino-caller v3.4.0 adds the stackAdjustment option.
• mercurius v12.2.0 uses the error formatter for subscription errors.
• pino v8.11.0 fixes msg precedence when sending a merging object with msg and err.
• readable-stream v2.3.8 and v3.6.1 fix undefined global in some environments.
• pino-pretty v9.4.0 adds a colorizeObjects option to disable object colorization.

Articles

In “how to build a pokedex with Platformatic”, Manuel Spigolon, one of the fellow Fastify collaborators, reports:

After building this small project, I think Platformatic is not just an ORM as it may seem but an enhanced version of Fastify.

Read the article!

• What is a dynamic GraphQL query? A dynamic GraphQL query is a query that is constructed at runtime, based on the needs of the client. Interested? Read the second article from Manuel Spigolon: Dynamic GraphQL queries with Mercurius.

• Checkou tout how my friend Liran Tal takes page element screenshots with Playwright.

• How to give advice on the internet without being an utter menace. Please read this carefully.

Upcoming Events

If you would like to meet me in person, you will find me at these upcoming events:

• CityJS - London, UK - 31st of March
• JSDay 2023 - Verona, Italy - 12-14th of April
• Node Congress - Berlin, Germany - 14th of April
• Open Source Summit / OpenJS World / OpenJS Collaborators’ Summit - Vancouver, Canada - 9-12th of May