---
title: "ndb, a new and improved debugging experience for Node"
publication: "Node Weekly"
issue: 248
published_at: "2018-07-26"
canonical_url: "https://nodeweekly.com/issues/248"
---

The latest Node.js news, articles, tools, and projects.       

#248 — July 26, 2018 

[Read on the Web](https://nodeweekly.com/issues/248)   

Node Weekly 

[![\](https://res.cloudinary.com/cpress/image/upload/w_1280,e_sharpen:60/uzlustdtz4fzf9ynx8hf.jpg)](https://nodesource.com/blog/why-the-new-v8-is-so-damn-fast)  

[Why the New V8 is So Darn Fast](https://nodesource.com/blog/why-the-new-v8-is-so-damn-fast) — The entire V8 compiler pipeline was overhauled (and shipped) with Node 8 and above. Here’s some analysis of how that led to serious speed improvements. 

Thorsten Lorenz  

[![\](https://res.cloudinary.com/cpress/image/upload/w_1280,e_sharpen:60/wuiug3dpcly1g476wudi.jpg)](https://github.com/GoogleChromeLabs/ndb)  

[ndb: An Improved Debugging Experience for Node](https://github.com/GoogleChromeLabs/ndb) — Run your Node code with `ndb` and get extra, powerful Node debugging features right in Chrome’s DevTools including editing files and setting breakpoints before modules are loaded. 

Google Chrome Labs   [![\](https://copm.s3.amazonaws.com/1f9a4511.jpg)](https://frontendmasters.com/courses/webpack-fundamentals/) 

[Webpack 4 Fundamentals 🛠️ by Webpack Core Maintainer, Sean Larkin](https://frontendmasters.com/courses/webpack-fundamentals/) — Webpack 4 is the most popular and flexible build tool – Vue CLI, create-react-app and the Angular CLI all use Webpack under the hood – as soon as you need something custom, _you'll need to [know Webpack](https://frontendmasters.com/courses/webpack-fundamentals/)._ 

Frontend Masters sponsor   

[excel4node: An Excel Spreadsheet (XLSX) Generation Library](https://github.com/natergj/excel4node) — Conforms to the ECMA-376 OOXML specification 2nd edition and the examples in the documentation are quite thorough. [ExcelJS](https://github.com/guyonroche/exceljs) is another option in this space. 

Nathan (Nater) Jorde   

[Notes from Node Summit 2018](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1enultPIAVHkjpHfHXSdAx6n3aI0gmXFlryb-Qzc86ag/edit#heading=h.2kexj8bnhc69) — There’s no videos up from this week’s Node Summit yet but these thorough notes give a good sense of how the event is going and the topics covered. Once videos are up, we’ll be linking to them from Node Weekly :-) 

Ron Waldon   

[Developing Real-Time Web Applications with Server-Sent Events](https://auth0.com/blog/developing-real-time-web-applications-with-server-sent-events/) — A detailed look at how to create real-time web apps using SSE which is [supported](https://caniuse.com/#feat=eventsource) by all major browsers except Edge (which can be polyfilled). 

Andrea Chiarelli   

[uws, A Popular WebSocket Module, Has Been 'Deprecated'](https://www.npmjs.com/package/uws) — With over 500K weekly downloads, the author has [some concerns](https://gitlab.com/uNetworking/uWebSockets/issues/11) over the core npm repository. 

Alex Hultman  

💻 Jobs  

[Node Data Engineer at eBench (Remote, full-time)](http://blog.ebench.com/were-hiring-node-data-engineer/) — We're a SaaS company that creates beautiful data visualizations. Enjoy crafting quality code? We would love to hear from you. 

eBench   

[Join Our Career Marketplace & Get Matched With a Job You Love](https://www.hired.com/node) — Through Hired, software engineers have transparency into salary offers, competing opportunities and job details. 

Hired  

💬Articles & Opinion  

[Why Apollo: Advantages, Disadvantages and Alternatives](https://www.robinwieruch.de/why-apollo-advantages-disadvantages-alternatives/) — If you’re using GraphQL in your apps, this run through of the pros and cons of using Apollo, plus links to some alternatives, may be worth a look. 

Robin Wieruch   

[Bitmovin 2018 Video Dev Survey](https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/7VHSW75) — Complete for your chance to win an iPhone X. 

Bitmovin sponsor   

[HTTP Requests Compared: Why Jeff Thinks Axios Is Better Than 'node-fetch'](https://medium.com/@jeffrey.allen.lewis/http-requests-compared-why-axios-is-better-than-node-fetch-more-secure-can-handle-errors-better-39fde869a4a6) — _Verrry_ subjective, but may inspire some thoughts. 

Jeff Lewis  

📘 Tutorials  

[A Crash Course on Serverless APIs with Express and MongoDB](https://hackernoon.com/a-crash-course-on-serverless-apis-with-express-and-mongodb-77774f7730fe) — A really detailed look at running Express in a serverless context. 

Adnan Rahić   

[Deploying a Stateful Node App on Google Cloud Kubernetes Engine](https://blog.risingstack.com/deploying-a-stateful-application-on-google-cloud-kubernetes-engine/) — Uses the [Ghost](https://ghost.org/) blogging engine as an example. 

Kristof Icancza   

[Writing Google Cloud Functions with Node 8](https://itnext.io/you-can-now-write-google-cloud-functions-with-node-js-8-bd066ea6d4f5) — How to use the Node 8 environment by deploying a function that uses a couple of features that weren’t available in Node 6. 

Simon Prickett   

▶[How to Deploy a Simple Node App to Heroku](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxfxiR8TVNU) — Ideal for beginners who want to deploy an app fast. 

Jonny Kalambay   

[CPU Profiling in Production Node.js Applications](https://stackimpact.com/blog/cpu-profiling-in-production-node-js-applications/) 

StackImpact sponsor   

[Debugging Node.js OpenWhisk Actions](http://jamesthom.as/blog/2018/07/10/debugging-node-dot-js-openwhisk-actions/) 

James Thomas  

🔧 Code and Tools  

[JSInspect: Detect Copy-Pasted and Structurally Similar Code](https://github.com/danielstjules/jsinspect) — A tool for finding those duplicated code smells in your codebase. Supports ES6, JSX and even Flow. 

Daniel St. Jules   

[Prepack: A Partial Evaluator and Optimizer for JavaScript](https://github.com/facebook/prepack) — Not new but there’s been a stream of releases recently. 

Facebook   

[Keystone 4.0: A Node.js CMS and App Framework](https://medium.com/keystone-js/keystone-4-has-landed-7080221ac069) — An open-source framework for developing database-driven websites, apps and APIs in Node. It’s built on on Express and MongoDB. [Version 4 release notes here](https://github.com/keystonejs/keystone/releases). 

Jed Watson   

[express-http-context: Get and Set Request-Scoped Context Anywhere](https://github.com/skonves/express-http-context) 

Steve Konves   

[Terminalizer: Record Your Terminal and Generate Animated GIF Images](https://github.com/faressoft/terminalizer) 

Mohammad Fares   

[node-inline-cpp: Inline C++ with Node](https://github.com/vshymanskyy/node-inline-cpp) — It’s just a prototype, but a very interesting use of template strings. 

Volodymyr Shymanskyy    

...and finally 

[![npm, Inc. on Twitter\](https://res.cloudinary.com/cpress/image/upload/w_1280,e_sharpen:60/xhahfc5mmldwixcarvop.jpg)](https://twitter.com/npmjs/status/1022191899304591361)        

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