--- title: "All aboard the (high speed) Express train" publication: "Node Weekly" issue: 550 published_at: "2024-10-01" canonical_url: "https://nodeweekly.com/issues/550" --- Plus building standalone executables with Node, pretty gradient strings, and using local LLMs from Node. | #​550 — October 1, 2024 [Read on the Web](https://nodeweekly.com/issues/550) Together with [![Code Rabbit\](https://res.cloudinary.com/cpress/image/upload/c_fill,g_auto,e_trim,w_2959,h_645/e_make_transparent/co_white,e_outline:100/mokro9a3rxmnqminzfmk.png)](https://coderabbit.ai?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=cooperpress-node.js) ![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/iqfanl6j2veej1eaualk.jpg)](https://github.com/dimdenGD/ultimate-express) [µExpress / Ultimate Express: Like Express, But Faster?](https://github.com/dimdenGD/ultimate-express) — It’s _not_ [Express](https://expressjs.com/), but a reimplementation of Express’s functionality with API compatibility. Based on µWebSockets, and with an optimized router, it boasts [faster performance](https://github.com/dimdenGD/ultimate-express?tab=readme-ov-file#test-results) than regular Express, but needs some C++ magic to make it happen. dimden [Jiti 2.0: Runtime TypeScript and ESM Support for Node.js](https://github.com/unjs/jiti) — Long before Node got round to natively adding ES modules support or type stripping, Jiti brought the ability to quickly run TypeScript with native ESM support to Node, and it’s still going. v2.0 adds JSX/TSX import support, the ability to use Jiti via Node’s global hooks, and more. UnJS [![\](https://copm.s3.amazonaws.com/0642125d.png)](https://coderabbit.ai?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=cooperpress-node.js) [Supercharge Your Node.js Code Reviews with AI](https://coderabbit.ai?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=cooperpress-node.js) — Tired of event loop bottlenecks, async errors, and dependency vulnerabilities slipping through code reviews? CodeRabbit, an AI-powered code review tool, analyzes your codebase line-by-line, detecting perf issues, optimizing async patterns, and enhancing security with each pull request. CodeRabbit sponsor [Building Standalone Executables with Node.js](https://codesnip.sh/posts/building-standalone-nodejs-executables) — While the developer experience isn’t quite as nice as with Deno or Bun yet, Node does have [experimental support](https://nodejs.org/api/single-executable-applications.html) for building single executables of apps that you can distribute to systems which don’t have Node installed. Tony Pujals [JavaScript Minification Benchmarks](https://github.com/privatenumber/minification-benchmarks) — A frequently updated benchmark suite and results comparing the speed and quality of JavaScript minification across a variety of tools including esbuild, Babel, Bun, SWC, and Uglify. Hiroki Osame 📄 [An Interesting HTML Parser Conundrum](https://dbushell.com/2024/10/01/html-parser-conundrum/) – When stuff that _looks like_ HTML appears within a document, problems can arise.. David Bushell 📄 [How `tcpdump` Led Us to a Bug in Node's IPv6 Handling](https://www.checklyhq.com/blog/how-a-tcpdump-led-us-to-a-bug-in-nodes-ipv6-handli/) Uzgur and Mellifera (Checkly) 📺 [Will Deno 2.0 Replace Node.js?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjtQLQ4X4Tw) Kyle Cook 📰 Classifieds 🪝 [Hookdeck:](https://hookdeck.com/discover/nodeweekly?ref=nodeweekly-550) A serverless queue to reliably send, receive, transform, filter, and route events across your event-driven apps. --- [Pythagora](https://bit.ly/pyt-v1-cp-1) is an AI dev tool that builds production-ready tools (not demo apps). It writes the code and talks to you in the process. 🛠 Code & Tools [![\](https://res.cloudinary.com/cpress/image/upload/w_1280,e_sharpen:60,q_auto/kjgbztsr5gtoxps0vncm.jpg)](https://www.gitify.io/) [Gitify: GitHub Notifications From Your Menu Bar](https://www.gitify.io/) — If you get too many GitHub notifications, this utility aims to ‘tame’ them by bringing the notifications to your menu bar on macOS, Windows and Linux. Built using Node and React as an Electron app. And, yes, [it's open source.](https://github.com/gitify-app/gitify) Manos Konstantinidis [Building AI Applications on Postgres? Start with pgai](https://github.com/timescale/pgai) — [pgai](https://github.com/timescale/pgai) empowers developers with AI superpowers, enabling integration of AI workflows for tasks like embedding creation and model completion. Timescale sponsor [Superdiff 2.0: Compares Two Arrays or Objects and Return a Diff](https://github.com/DoneDeal0/superdiff) — Got two similar objects and want to see the underlying differences? antoine [![\](https://res.cloudinary.com/cpress/image/upload/w_1280,e_sharpen:60/urv2rc0q6o3rgcwy3dl1.jpg)](https://github.com/bokub/gradient-string) [gradient-string 3.0: Beautiful Color Gradients in Terminal Output](https://github.com/bokub/gradient-string) — What’s the next step up from colorizing the text output of your Node-powered CLI app? _Gradients._ [v3.0](https://github.com/bokub/gradient-string/releases/tag/3.0.0) is rewritten in TypeScript and is a pure ES module. Boris K 🤖 [node-llama-cpp v3: Run LLMs Locally with Llama from Node](https://node-llama-cpp.withcat.ai/blog/v3) — One option for running LLMs locally is to spin up [Ollama](https://ollama.com/) and speak with it over HTTP, but this makes everything possible with a simple npm package, including within Electron apps. _“Say goodbye to setup headaches,”_ they claim. Gilad S. [Cacheable: A Suite of Caching Packages](https://github.com/jaredwray/cacheable) — A popular dependency that provides [a simple, generic caching module](https://github.com/jaredwray/cacheable/tree/main/packages/cache-manager), as well as a way to [wrap native HTTP requests](https://github.com/jaredwray/cacheable/tree/main/packages/cacheable-request) with RFC compliant cache support. Jared Wray [exiftool-vendored 28.3: Fast, Cross-Platform Node.js Access to ExifTool](https://github.com/photostructure/exiftool-vendored.js) — Use this when you want to access embedded EXIF data within image files (particularly those taken with phones or DSLRs). PhotoStructure [Simple Git 3.27: Run `git` Commands in Node Apps](https://github.com/steveukx/git-js) — Not a `git` reimplementation but an interface/abstraction for using the standard Git client from Node code. Steve King - [Redbird 1.0](https://github.com/OptimalBits/redbird) – A robust reverse proxy. We first linked to it in seven years ago! - [Mongoose 8.7](https://github.com/Automattic/mongoose) – Popular MongoDB object modeling library. - [fdir 6.4](https://github.com/thecodrr/fdir/releases/tag/v6.4.0) – High-perf directory crawler & globbing library. - [Prisma 5.20](https://github.com/prisma/prisma/releases/tag/5.20.0) – Popular ORM for Node.js and TypeScript. - [ArangoJS 9.1](https://github.com/arangodb/arangojs) – Driver for the [ArangoDB](https://arangodb.com/) graph database. - [AdonisJS v6.14.0](https://github.com/adonisjs/core/releases/tag/v6.14.0)– TypeScript-first web framework. - [Soap 1.1.5](https://github.com/vpulim/node-soap) – A SOAP client _and_ server library. **Got a link for us?** Reply and tell us. We can't include everything but we'll look at anything you send. _Thanks!_ --- **Sponsorship:** Email `[kristina@cooperpress.com](mailto:kristina@cooperpress.com)` for details. --- Published by Cooper Press Ltd. 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