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This was revealed by the Node.js group in one of the posts announcing the latest Node.js update, Node.js 15.0.0. Yeah, Node.js 15 has been released and this post talks about important changes and highlights of this latest edition.

One thing you need to keep in mind before we start debating Node.js 15 is that Node.js 15 will not be promoted to LTSS 15. (Long-term support). The LTS version is Node.js 14. For deployments, the Node.js group supports the use of the LTS release line.

What’s New in Node.js 15?

October 2020 saw the introduction of Node.js 15:

This latest Node.js release comes with a new version of npm 7. In addition, Node.js 15 is fitted with performance enhancements, upgrading the V8 JavaScript engine, solving problems, and implementing AbortController and QUIC experimentally.

Node.js 15 web development

Node.js 15’s Big Highlights:

npm 7:

For the JavaScript programming language, npm is a package manager. With millions of developers and over 1.3M packages and 75B downloads a month, it is also one of the largest app registries.

There are several long-awaited features in npm 7 that include Workspaces, a new package-lock.json format, and yarn. Lock file support, and automatic peer dependency installation. Significant internal improvements to npm 7 ensure further stability and longevity of codebase.

N-API 7:

N-API is a Native Addon Building API and is part of Node.js. It is used for maintaining consistency across versions of Node.js and various compiler levels. With the latest big release of N-API 7, Node.js 15 ships with new functionality and additional methods to work with ArrayBuffers.

AbortController:

Node.js 15 is an experimental implementation. It’s a utility class used in selected promise-based APIs to indicate cancellation. The AbortController enables developers, as and when necessary, to abort one or more Web requests.

QUIC:

QUIC is an HTTP/3 UDP-based network transport protocol that offers built-in TLS 1.3 authentication, multiplexing, flow control, error correction, migration of connections, and so on. Node.js 15 comes via the QUIC configuration flag with experimental support for this.

QUIC is a Google-designed experimental, general-purpose, transport layer network protocol. The TCP+TLS+HTTP/2 protocol implemented on UDP is quicker, more powerful, and similar. Compared to TCP, it aims to lower latency.
One of the strong groups with a continuous chain of updates, bug fixes and plans to update Node.js is the Node.js community.

Latest V8.6:

This new version of Node.js, Node.js 15, has JavaScript support for V8 runtime updates. With several performance enhancements and features, it has been upgraded to 8.6 from 8.4.

Unhandled Rejection:

In Node.js 15, the default mode for Unhandled Rejection is changed to throw from Alert. This decision is based on the results of the survey on Node.js User Insights: Unhandled Pledge Rejections and a vote by the Technical Steering Committee of Node.js.

What more is there?

More emphasis has been put on enhancing the contribution process this time. The Node.js group has conducted a survey to obtain input on the participation process to assess the next field of change. Several automation and tooling enhancements have been made, resulting in easy coordination and management.

The ‘Next 10 Years of Node.js’ repository was developed last year to collaboratively work on the path and strategic decision of Node.js for the next 10 years to drive development. It is important to see how the Node.js group sets the course of success in the coming years, as Node.js celebrates 11 years of its life.

Note: Node.js 14 is an LTS version and it keep on to be supported until April 2023.

A good time to update to the new edition is now:

As the Node.js group declared Node.js 10’s end-of-life in April 2021, it is a good time to start preparing for updates and performance benefits to be leveraged. To unlock performance improvements and allow new features to be leveraged in the production system, software updates are crucial.

Node.js 15: How has it improved the experience of developers?

Node.js 15 is all set to increase the productivity of developers and boost the overall developer experience with some significant bug fixes and improvements. To exploit experimental functions, new npm7, V8.6, QUIC protocol, and major bug fixes, developers should start using Node.js 15.

Why with Node.js?

Node.js made it happen in JavaScript to write server-side scripting. It is a JavaScript runtime environment that is open source, back-end, and cross-platform, used by a large number of businesses. This makes real-time web app creation simpler than ever before, with asynchronous I/O and event-driven design. The world’s renowned brands, Fortune 500 firms, startups, and mid-sized companies favor Node.js. Rather than using different languages for the frontend and backend, it represents the ‘JavaScript Everywhere’ model for full web creation.

Benefits of Node.js 15:

    • Some of the significant advantages of using Node.js are easy scalability, modern design, speed, and high performance.
    • Using even-numbered updates for development and odd-numbers for experimental and new projects is suggested by the Node.js group.
    • Node.js 15, to sum up, is worth a try. Share your feedback and contribute to developing the future of Node.js.