---
title: "Node can run TypeScript (sort of)"
publication: "Node Weekly"
issue: 542
published_at: "2024-07-30"
canonical_url: "https://nodeweekly.com/issues/542"
---

Plus generating Dockerfiles with AI, and a comparison of cold start times on AWS Lambda. |        

#​542 — July 30, 2024 

[Read on the Web](https://nodeweekly.com/issues/542)  

Together with [![Sentry logo\](https://res.cloudinary.com/cpress/image/upload/c_fill,g_auto,e_trim,w_350,h_100/e_make_transparent/co_white,e_outline:7/xdmchdxkka938lxfr86f.png)](https://sentry.io/resources/debugging-your-nodejs-project/?utm_medium=paid-community&utm_source=nodeweekly&utm_campaign=fy25q2-nodejsworkshop&utm_content=newsletter-nodeworkshop-watch)  

![Node.js Weekly](https://res.cloudinary.com/cpress/image/upload/v1653576619/lgfqinzbdqttwmhvljxb.png) 

[![\](https://res.cloudinary.com/cpress/image/upload/w_1280,e_sharpen:60,q_auto/byahnkxbnrlxbqjwo9tq.jpg)](https://socket.dev/blog/node-js-adds-experimental-support-for-typescript)  

[Node.js Adds Experimental Support for TypeScript](https://socket.dev/blog/node-js-adds-experimental-support-for-typescript) — In [this pull request](https://github.com/nodejs/node/pull/53725), Node merged an experimental ability to transpile TypeScript into JavaScript, ultimately letting Node directly ‘run TypeScript’. However, no type checking is performed and, [as Matt Pocock explains](https://x.com/mattpocockuk/status/1816524433106043331), experimental and TypeScript-only features are a no-no. Perhaps think of it as less _‘running TypeScript’_ and more _‘able to tolerate most of TypeScript’_? 

Sarah Gooding (Socket)   [![\](https://copm.s3.amazonaws.com/e270d5e6.png)](https://sentry.io/resources/debugging-your-nodejs-project/?utm_medium=paid-community&utm_source=nodeweekly&utm_campaign=fy25q2-nodejsworkshop&utm_content=newsletter-nodeworkshop-watch) 

[Debugging Your Node.js Project with Sentry](https://sentry.io/resources/debugging-your-nodejs-project/?utm_medium=paid-community&utm_source=nodeweekly&utm_campaign=fy25q2-nodejsworkshop&utm_content=newsletter-nodeworkshop-watch) — Using a demo Node.js app, learn the basics of monitoring and debugging any Node.js project with Sentry. Watch the step-by-step workshop on-demand. 

Sentry sponsor   

[Node v20.16.0 (LTS) Released](https://nodejs.org/en/blog/release/v20.16.0) — If the recent [bugs](https://github.com/nodejs/node/pull/53934) in the ‘Latest’ release branch have put you off, the trusty LTS releases are for you. A small-ish release, but Node 20 gains `process.getBuiltinModule` and `Blob#bytes`. 

Marco Ippolito   

😍 Regarding last week's [issues with v20.5.0,](https://github.com/nodejs/node/pull/53934) the Node team has improved its testing processes to help avoid such problems in the future. No story to link to; I just follow [the Node team's livestreams](https://www.youtube.com/@nodejs-foundation/streams) and they were talking about it. :-)  

[How to Create Dockerfiles with Generative AI](https://www.docker.com/blog/how-to-create-dockerfiles-with-genai/) — The folks at Docker look at the potential for using ChatGPT to create Dockerfiles for Node projects. 

Docker Labs   

[Benchmarking AWS Lambda Cold Starts Across JavaScript Runtimes](https://deno.com/blog/aws-lambda-coldstart-benchmarks) — It’s from the Deno team so it may not surprise you that Deno was found to be fastest, but they share their methodology and results for Deno, Node, Bun and AWS’s managed Node runtime and, frankly, Node mostly did very well too. 

Zinkovsky and Jiang (Deno)   

📄 [Working with PostgreSQL's Row Level Security in Node.js](https://www.newline.co/@kristiandupont/row-level-security-in-nodejs--7691de55) Kristian Dupont 

📄 [Highlights from Git 2.46](https://github.blog/open-source/git/highlights-from-git-2-46/) Taylor Blau (GitHub)    

🛠 Code & Tools  

[Announcing TypeScript 5.6 Beta](https://devblogs.microsoft.com/typescript/announcing-typescript-5-6-beta/) — The first beta of the next major version of TypeScript is out. [Region-prioritized diagnostics](https://devblogs.microsoft.com/typescript/announcing-typescript-5-6-beta/#region-prioritized-diagnostics-in-editors) (VS Code only, for now) is a particularly interesting addition. 

Daniel Rosenwasser (Microsoft)   

[PythonMonkey: Embed a JavaScript Engine into the Python VM](https://github.com/Distributive-Network/PythonMonkey) — If you need to use Python but also want to run JS, this gives you a way to do it with Mozilla’s SpiderMonkey engine. It’s not V8 or Node based, but supports the Node.js and NPM-compatible CommonJS module system. 

Distributive Corp.   

[WarpStream: An 80% Cheaper Drop-In Kafka Replacement](https://www.warpstream.com/?utm_source=node_weekly&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=july_30_2024_sponsored_link) — Kafka without the hassle. No inter-AZ networking costs. Completely stateless. No disks to manage. Infinitely scalable. 

WarpStream sponsor   

[node-fluent-ffmpeg: A Fluent API for Invoking _FFmpeg_](https://github.com/fluent-ffmpeg/node-fluent-ffmpeg) — Abstracts the complex command-line usage of the popular [FFmpeg](https://www.ffmpeg.org/) media transcoder into a fluent Node API. 

Various Contributors   

[Handbrake-JS 7.1: Control Video Encoding and Transcoding from Node](https://github.com/75lb/handbrake-js) — Sticking to the theme of media transcoding, this is an interface to the popular, open source [Handbrake](https://handbrake.fr/) video transcoding tool. 

Lloyd Brookes   

- [Bun 1.1.21](https://bun.sh/blog/bun-v1.1.21) – The JavaScriptCore-based alternative server-side JavaScript runtime improves its Node.js (and Remix) compatibility even more.
- [node-mysql2 3.11](https://github.com/sidorares/node-mysql2) – Fast MySQL driver. Adds initial support for MySQL 9.0's new vector type.
- [Trash 9.0](https://github.com/sindresorhus/trash) – Move files/directories to the _trash_, rather than deleting outright.
- [node-oracledb 6.6](https://medium.com/@sharad-chandran/node-oracledb-6-6-brings-more-vector-and-configuration-capabilities-to-support-oracle-database-23ai-ee9ea88d5349) – Official _Oracle Database_ driver for Node.
- [YouTube.js 10.2](https://github.com/LuanRT/YouTube.js) – Unofficial client for YouTube's internal API.
- [express-rate-limit 7.4](https://github.com/express-rate-limit/express-rate-limit) – Basic rate limiting for Express apps.
- [terminal-image 3.0](https://github.com/sindresorhus/terminal-image) – Display images in the terminal.
- [MQTT.js 5.9](https://github.com/mqttjs/MQTT.js) – MQTT client for Node and browsers.
- [is-online 11.0](https://github.com/sindresorhus/is-online) – Check if the internet is reachable.
- [ESLint v9.8.0](https://eslint.org/blog/2024/07/eslint-v9.8.0-released/)    

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