nodejs-best-practices

Choose Hono for edge and serverless deployments needing fast cold starts, Fastify for high-performance APIs, and Express for legacy projects or maximum ecosystem compatibility. Consider deployment target, cold start requirements, and team familiarity before deciding.

Zod is the default choice for TypeScript-first projects with type inference. Valibot offers a smaller bundle size through tree-shaking, ArkType targets performance-critical scenarios, and Yup fits existing React Form integrations.

Use Promise.all for parallel independent operations where all must succeed, and Promise.allSettled when some operations can fail without affecting others. Use async/await for sequential operations and Promise.race for timeouts.

Node.js 22 and later supports running TypeScript files directly using the --experimental-strip-types flag, removing the build step for simple projects. This works well for scripts and simple APIs but may not suit complex build pipelines.

Sync methods block the event loop, preventing Node.js from handling other requests while the operation completes. Use async alternatives for I/O operations and offload CPU-intensive work like crypto or image processing to worker threads.

This guide teaches decision-making rather than providing copy-paste code, so you must adapt principles to your specific context. It does not replace environment-specific validation, testing, or expert review for production systems.