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Aleksei Aleinikov
Aleksei Aleinikov

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⚙️ Node.js in 2025: Async servers that scale on a budget

Need to handle thousands of connections without melting your cloud bill? Start here.

🧠 Node’s secret sauce hasn’t changed:
Single-threaded, non-blocking I/O = maximum concurrency with minimum RAM.
In real benchmarks, Node.js often uses 5× less memory than JVM-based stacks for the same workload.

💡 Where Node shines in 2025:
• API proxies and microservices that spend most time waiting on I/O
• WebSocket backends with stable memory footprints
• Async data pipelines and streaming workloads
• Lightweight edge functions (especially with async iterators in Node 22)

🚀 What’s new & better this year:
• Async iterators now feel almost like for loops — but stream-safe
• Worker threads offload CPU-heavy work without blocking the event loop
• Event loop lifecycle is leaner, and memory leaks easier to track
• End-to-end async/await codebases feel readable, testable, and snappy

⚠️ Real-world pro tips:
• Use sync code only at startup
• Always isolate CPU-heavy tasks — your latency will thank you
• Don’t mix callbacks and promises without reason
• Watch memory in long-lived services — leaks hide in silence

🧩 Bonus fact: In 2025, most headless CMSs and real-time layers (yes, even Strapi) still delegate live features to Node.js.
📈 Why it still matters:
Node hasn’t just kept up — it’s evolved.
From fast startups to microservices, from cost-sensitive APIs to streaming apps, Node still delivers — without threads, noise, or drama.
https://javascript.plainenglish.io/node-js-2025-async-servers-that-handle-heavy-traffic-on-a-slim-budget-208855c501b5

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