Handling V8’s memory usage and GC

April 22, 2025 By Mark Otto 0

Node.js Weekly

Optimizing Node Performance with V8 GC Optimization — Matteo recently ▶️ gave a talk at dotJS about Node’s memory usage and decided to write it up into a blog post too. Matteo notes that high memory usage doesn’t necessarily mean you have a memory leak, explains how V8’s garbage collector works, and how you can tune things specifically for your own use case.

Matteo Collina

Microsoft Warns About Node.js’ Role in Modern Malware — Microsoft’s security team is observing a sharp increase in the use of Node.js to deliver malware and other malicious payloads. This post digs into a couple of examples and what’s going on behind the scenes.

Microsoft

Node v20.19.1 (LTS) Released — You know it’s a quiet week when a .1 release is feature-worthy news. Little here except dependency bumps, though, but it’s always good to see an update of what remains a popular Node version (though Node 22 ‘Jod’ should now be your LTS version of choice, ideally).

Ulises Gascón

📄 Dependency-Free Command-Line Apps Powered by Node’s Core Modules – How far can you get without pulling in external modules? Liran Tal

📄 Float16Array in JavaScript – Understanding the 16-bit floating point array type. Coming to Node soon. Trevor I. Lasn

📄 The Best Node.js Observability Tools in 2025 – A comparison of seven approaches. Lizz Parody (NodeSource)

📄 When to Use map() vs. forEach() Matt Smith

🛠 Code & Tools

📢  Elsewhere in JavaScript

A roundup of some other interesting stories in the broader JavaScript landscape, in case you’ve missed them: