Empowering Startups: Building Better, More Secure Apps and Ensuring Exceptional CX with N|Solid

Startups face numerous challenges on their path to success, and two key aspects that significantly impact their growth are code quality and user experience. In today’s fast-paced technological landscape, startups must prioritize these areas to build robust, scalable, and secure applications. This is where N|Solid can be a dynamic solution by providing powerful telemetry, insights, and security alerts for Node.js apps. This post will explore leveraging N|Solid effectively, a game-changer for startups, saving critical time and resources while serving customers with the best experience.

We recently participated in Collision Conf in Toronto, where we met hundreds of startups who shared their bold ideas and solutions with the world. It’s why we wanted to put out this post, as we were asked over and over again about how we could help them save time, solve issues with their apps and level up their security.

Startups are often focused on speed to market, meaning a lot of effort goes into delivering features to match the market needs they seek to meet. Teams can be limited in terms of the level of testing rigor and tooling that focuses on quality vs. completion. It can be a central component of an MVP strategy, but there are risks with this approach, notably with application performance and user experience. We have helped many startups elevate their approach by adding N|Solid into their development workflow.

N|Solid is an AI-enabled APM (monitoring and management platform) and Security platform explicitly designed for Node.js applications. It offers various features that empower startups to optimize code performance, identify and troubleshoot issues, and deliver exceptional user experiences. With real-time insights and actionable data, N|Solid Console equips startups with the tools to make informed decisions and drive continuous improvement.

“If you are using Node for anything important for your business, you should take a long, hard look at N|Solid” – Russ Whitman, CEO NodeSource

N|Solid offers powerful debugging capabilities that enable developers to identify and rectify bottlenecks in production. With its built-in CPU profiling and heap snapshots, startups can quickly pinpoint performance hotspots and memory leaks, ensuring their applications run smoothly, even under high loads. By continuously monitoring performance metrics, startups can optimize their codebase, leading to faster and more responsive applications. They can also easily monitor and manage multiple instances of their applications, ensuring efficient load distribution and maximizing system resources.

Understanding the Importance of Code Quality

High-quality code forms the baseline of reliable, scalable, and maintainable applications. Code quality matters significantly, particularly for startups, as it empowers them to have control over critical variables. Code quality also plays a vital role in the success of startups by providing a solid foundation for reliable, scalable, and maintainable applications that their users love.

Poor code quality is very expensive. Performance issues can cost more than frustrated users; they add needless cloud spend and take the dev team away from feature development, trying to solve issues that are sometimes impossible to replicate in a dev or test environment. We have learned that teams often spend weeks, or even months, chasing bugs we could identify in minutes with N|Solid. That cost for a startup can be deadly.

We recommend that all developers and DevOps add monitoring tooling into their development process because we see the positive impact of these solutions daily. There are many options, but if you are using Node.js, N|Ssolid is the tool you should be using. Other APM’s are great at providing a view into a range of technologies, but they can lack the depth of insights needed to pinpoint issues, especially with Node. Other APM’s monitor Node apps through instrumentation, and to gather metrics, they interrupt the event loop (killing performance). N|Solid doesn’t require instrumentation and doesn’t break the event loop. More importantly, it gathers the data other solutions don’t (like visibility into worker threads).

Node is one of the most-loved technologies by developers because it’s easy to wield; you can get up to speed quickly and build applications fast. But it’s also relatively easy to build something in Node.js that has issues, especially the more complex the application is. Our Node experts have been helping developers access and leverage Node.js for nearly a decade – there is simply no better tool for Node.js than N|Solid. If your Startup uses Node, consider trying N|Solid. You can get started with a Free account __HERE__ and be up and running in no time; plus, we have special pricing for startups through September 2023 at half off!.

It’s True! We Love Startups! So Startups Get a 50% Discount!

As noted above, we have created a discount program for Startups! Get the Best Solution to Monitor & Secure Your Node Apps at Special Startup Pricing – FOR HALF OFF. To apply for this benefit, click HERE

Enhancing Security Oversight, Overnight!

Another great opportunity startups have when incorporating N|Solid into their architecture is the control and oversight of their security that they gain by integrating NCM (Node Certified Modules) in N|Solid Console and within our NCM GitHub App as a standard part of the development process. It’s a simple and easy way to immediately add visibility into potential security risks of your Node.js apps.

Node.js (like all open-source projects and software in general) can experience security flaws; there, are new CVE’s popping up all the time. With N|Solid and our GitHub app, Startups can understand security issues from development through production, with key insights to help understand security issues and how to resolve them.

Some of the key benefits that NCM – NodeSource brings are:

Vulnerability Mitigation: By proactively identifying vulnerabilities, developers can quickly apply patches or choose alternative packages, ensuring their applications remain secure.

License Compliance: This feature is particularly important for organizations with strict compliance requirements or who rely heavily on open-source software.

Report Generation: These reports provide valuable insights into the security and compliance status of Node.js applications, helping developers make informed decisions and take necessary actions.

Integration with GitHub: This integration simplifies the management of open-source Node packages within GitHub deployments, providing an additional layer of security and ensuring compliance during the development and deployment processes.

By leveraging the powerful features of GitHub NCM – NodeSource, developers can significantly enhance the security, compliance, and overall reliability of their Node.js applications.

The Future of Software Development, Powered by Telemetry, Security, and AI!

At Collision, the fast-growing tech conference that gathers industry leaders, innovators, and disruptors; we shared a big announcement about the future of Node! We announced our AI Assistant, Adrian, incorporated into N|Solid Console at Collision, revolutionizing intelligent monitoring and optimization for Node.js apps. This is pretty cool; read,on!

Supercharge Your Startup with AI Assistant, Adrian & N|Solid Console

Adrian is an advanced, AI-powered Assistant that provides actionable insights and suggestions, bringing context to your data. Imagine an AI chat assistant that lets you ask questions about the data and gives recommendations about how to solve issues them. It’s like “god mode” for Node. Enabling teams to streamline their Node.js applications, reduce downtime, cut costs, and enhance overall user satisfaction faster than ever.

Our AI Assistant, Adrian, leverages the power of AI to deliver a range of features that empower developers and teams to optimize their Node.js applications effectively. Let’s explore some of the key features of AI Assistant, Adrian:

Automated Metric Collection: AI Assistant, Adrian, automates the collection of essential performance metrics from Node.js applications. It provides real-time insights into critical areas such as event loop delays, CPU utilization, memory usage, and more.

Node Performance Enhancer: AI Assistant, Adrian, suggests optimizations to enhance the performance of Node.js applications.

Intelligent CPU Profiling: AI Assistant, Adrian, helps developers identify and resolve performance hotspots using smart CPU profiling.

Cost Calculator: AI Assistant, Adrian, includes a cost calculator that helps teams estimate the cost implications of their Node.js applications.

Code Advisor: AI Assistant, Adrian, is a knowledgeable advisor, providing recommendations and suggestions to improve code quality, maintainability, and scalability. It assists developers in adhering to coding best practices, ensuring clean and efficient code that is easier to maintain and scale over time.

Sign up HERE to join the private beta list and experience AI Assistant Adrian’s transformative capabilities in optimizing your Node.js applications. The combination of NodeSource’s N|Solid Console’s and the advanced AI capabilities of Adrian Assistant offers developers a powerful toolkit for optimizing their Node.js applications.

Conclusion

With N|Solid Console’s advanced insights and powerful features, startups can elevate their development processes, enhance application performance, and ensure unparalleled user experiences – saving critical time and cost.

The future of N|Solid is powered by AI and our Assistant, Adrian.

Let’s come together, connect, and propel the future of technology forward!

About NodeSource, Inc.

NodeSource, Inc. is a technology company completely focused on Node.js and is dedicated to helping organizations and developers leverage the power of this technology. We offer the leading APM for monitoring and securing Node.js and provide world-class support and consulting services to help organizations navigate their Node.js journey. __#KnowYourNode__.

For more information, Sign Up HERE to try N|Solid Console’s or visit NodeSource.com for more details and follow @NodeSource on Twitter.

htmx in 100 seconds

#​647 — July 13, 2023

Read on the Web

JavaScript Weekly

Driver.js: Create On-Page Tours, Highlights, and Contextual Help — A no-dependency, vanilla JavaScript library for putting together page tours and contextual help systems. The project is a few years old but has just been entirely rewritten and gained numerous enhancements, plus a huge lick of paint. There are lots of examples to check out.

Kamran Ahmed

Component Party: A Rosetta Stone of UI Library Code Examples — A comparison of different frameworks (like React, Vue, Svelte, Angular, Ember, etc.) by way of simple code snippets covering various tasks.

Mathieu Schimmerling

Test and Validate APIs Effectively and Efficiently — Gain access to several API testing tools and features that help you automate repetitive tasks, stay organized, and build robust workflows to ensure your APIs remain reliable and performant.

Postman sponsor

Prettier 3.0: Now Powered by ES Modules — The popular multi-language code formatter gets a big upgrade with a refactoring to ES modules making up the biggest change (though it can still be used as a library via CommonJS). One side effect is Prettier now supports ESM-based plugins and async parsers which means some necessary changes for Prettier plugin developers.

Sosuke Suzuki

Crockford on Plain Old JavaScript and the DOM — Over the years, Douglas has asked us to only use the good parts of JavaScript, to ▶️ stop using JavaScript, and now he suggests abandoning “the libraries” to instead work with the DOM directly. Lea Verou 🐦 picked up on this story and said this suggestion still isn’t very practical for most web apps as of 2023.

Douglas Crockford

🎉 RELEASES:

Ember 5.1 – The ambitious JS framework that’ll never give up takes a big step into the TypeScript world with stable TypeScript support and types-a-plenty.

p5.js 1.7 – Processing-inspired JavaScript library for creative coding. v1.7 introduces WebGL 2 and frame buffer support.

Prisma 5.0 – A popular ORM for Node.js and TypeScript. 5.0 boasts significant performance improvements.

typescript-eslint 6.0

⚡️ IN BRIEF:

obj?.prop = value; The optional chaining assignment proposal advanced to stage 1 at TC39 this week. (Explanatory slidedeck.)

Popular YouTube channel Fireship explains ▶️ htmx in 100 seconds – well timed, since htmx is seeing a huge amount of fresh interest. And if you’re wondering who the mastermind behind Fireship is, Honeypot has put up ▶️ a short documentary about him.

The folks at Sandworm have shared a look at the state of the npm registry including lots of trivia, history, and stats on how many packages there are, as well as the most commonly used keywords in packages.

Google shares a case study on performance of scroll-driven animations using its new browser based API versus ‘classical JavaScript techniques.’ Unsurprisingly it’s much faster running away from the main thread, and the spec remains in draft for now.

npm will now check the linked source commit and repo when you view a package’s provenance information on npmjs.com and warn you when said provenance cannot be established.

GitHub is rolling out a beta of passwordless, passkey based authentication on GitHub․com.

📒 Articles & Tutorials

Useful Functions for a (Deno) HTTP Server — You could think of HTTP in a functional way with requests going in and responses/results going out. The author explores Deno’s new Deno.serve function and how both it and the /x/http_fns functions can provide a more functional approach to common HTTP tasks.

Jollytoad

Testing the Dark Scenarios of a Node.js App — Several examples of often overlooked things you should be testing. What happens when a service times out, code is mutating things it shouldn’t, or you have zombie processes milling around? These are some of the ‘dark scenarios’ it’s not too difficult to prepare for.

Yoni Goldberg and Raz Luvaton

The 2023 State of the API Report Is Here — The State of the API is the world’s largest survey and report on APIs, with findings from over 40K developers and API professionals.

Postman sponsor

Creating Randomized Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Patterns — Nintendo’s new Zelda game uses repeated, geometric patterns as part of its aesthetic. This post looks at how to recreate such motifs with SVG and JavaScript.

Paul Hebert

5 TS Compiler Flags You Should Include in Your Project’s Config

Igor Konovalov

Deploying a Fastify and Vue 3 Static Site to Heroku

Liran Tal

Getting Started with Vector Databases in Node.js

Valeri Karpov

🛠 Code & Tools

MDX Editor: A Rich Markdown Editor React Component — A Lexical-powered Markdown editor for React apps that supports code blocks, tables, and more. The live demo shows off most of what you need to see.

Petyo Ivanov

Meet Your New Favorite Teammate: Cody, the AI Coding Assistant — Code faster with Cody, the only code AI that knows your entire codebase, like the pair programmer you always wanted.

Sourcegraph sponsor

electron-vite: Next Generation Electron Build Tooling — Fish and chips, Bert and Ernie.. some things are just better together, and so it goes with the Electron desktop app framework and the Vite frontend toolkit. There’s also an Electron Vite Boilerplate app to kick off a new app with.

Alex Wei

📊  Vizzu 0.8: A Library for Animated Data Visualizations — Making data visualizations is reasonably easy, but animating them is harder. Vizzu steps in to help you create animated data stories and explorations. There are lots of showcases and examples to peruse.

Vizzu Inc.

🐊  Putout: A Configurable, Babel-Based Linter and Code Transformer — Provides typical linting functionality with ESLint and code transformation with Babel, but distinguishes itself by being prepared to make “more drastic code transformations” than other tools. It’s not the most popular option but it makes a good case for itself in its thorough README.

coderaiser

Standardized Audio Context: Cross-Browser Web Audio API Wrapper — A side effect-free abstraction over a subset of the Web Audio API that works reliably across all mainstream browsers.

Christoph Guttandin

Kanel: Generate TypeScript Types from Postgres — It works by inspecting a live database and outputs code you can add to a TypeScript project and use with something like KnexGitHub repo.

Kristian Dupont

React Authentication — Without Complexity

Userfront sponsor

Boa 0.17 – An experimental Javascript lexer, parser and compiler written in Rust that can be embedded into other projects – it now has a module system.

Octokit.js 3.0
↳ Official GitHub SDK for browsers, Node, and Deno.

Release It! 16.1
↳ Automate npm package publishing and versioning.

zlFetch 6.0
↳ Convenience wrapper around the Fetch API.

Terminalizer 0.10
↳ Record your terminal and generate animated GIFs.

eslint-plugin-prettier 5.0
↳ Prettier, but as an ESLint rule.

Preact 10.16 – 3KB React compatible alternative.

💻 Jobs

Find JavaScript Jobs with Hired — Hired makes job hunting easy-instead of chasing recruiters, companies approach you with salary details up front. Create a free profile now.

Hired

🧑‍💻 Got a job listing to share? Here’s how.

🍩 Homer would approve

donut.js: donut.c, But in JavaScriptdonut.c, dating from 2006, is a donut-shaped C program that, when run, animates a spinning ASCII text donut on the screen. Here’s a fresh and hot JavaScript variant!

Evan Zhou