Node.js and JavaScript in 2026

Learnings and Opinions

It is 2026, I still us nvm to manage my local node installation, most of the time I just run nvm install --lts

I tried pnpm, it seems faster, but it introduces a new lock file, so I stick with npm.

To be more secure disable post install scripts in the .npmrc configuration.

save-exact=true
min-release-age=5
ignore-scripts=true

Notes on Packages

dotenv is not needed anymore, node can handle an env file with node --env-file-if-exists=file

A few other packages can be replaced:

• node-fetch → use the built in fetch()

• Test frameworks → node:test

• chalk / kleur → util.styleText()

• glob → fs.glob()

• rimraf → fs.rm({ recursive: true })

• mkdirp → fs.mkdir({ recursive: true })

• uuid (v4) → crypto.randomUUID()

• Nodemon → node can watch files for changes with —watch

Standard library has now a node: prefix so use

import fs from 'node:fs';
import path from 'node:path';
import os from 'node:os';
...

knip

I love the tool knip, it highlights all unused imports, packages. With this you can do a good deep cleanup. example config knip.json

{
  "entry": ["src/index.tsx"],
  "project": ["src/**"],
  "ignore": [
    "/src/openapi/**",
  ],
  "exclude": ["enumMembers"]
}

Other Tools

• check what is outdated: npx npm-check-updates -i --format group

• check for critical: npm audit --audit-level=critical

• start a debugger with: node --inspect index.js

Other Notes

• structuredClone() to get a deep copy

• BigInt if your numbers are bigger than Number.MAX_SAFE_INTEGER

• node can directly import a json

  • import data from ‘./data.json’ with { type: ‘json’ }

Frameworks

Vue.js is still a great choice.

TypeScript and node.js

During development we use tsc and node with the watch parameter, we can start them both as side by side terminal with a vscode task.

package.json

    "dev:tsc": "tsc --watch --preserveWatchOutput",
    "dev:node": "node --watch-path=./dist dist/index.js"

TypeScript without TypeScript

TypeScript has syntax that does not exist in JavaScript, if you avoid them you don’t need the build/transpiling step. Without the special syntax you can strip the types from the .ts files and run them as JavaScript.

With tsc --erasableSyntaxOnly you can check if any TypeScript special syntax is used in the project. erasableSyntaxOnly

JavaScript with JSDoc checked by TypeScript

A JavaScript project can still use TypeScript for checking the code and catching bugs. The type information can be provided as JSDoc.

Checking JavaScript files

tsc --noEmit --allowJs --checkJs <file>

Snippets

Testing with the node standard library.

// node --test file.js
import {describe, it} from "node:test"
import assert from "node:assert"

function isEmailValid(email) {
  return /^[^\s@]+@[^\s@]+\.[^\s@]+$/.test(email);
}

describe("isEmailValid function", () => {
	it("returns true for a valid email", () => {
		assert.ok(isEmailValid("john@example.org"))
	})
  it("returns false for a invalid email", () => {
    assert.ok(!isEmailValid("john@example"))
  })	
})