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Grokking Asynchronous Work in Node.js [I]

1,352 views · Published 16 October 2017 · 30:56 · Indexed 28 October 2026

Channel: node.js · 2017 · Science & Technology

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Grokking Asynchronous Work in Node.js [I] - Thorsten Lorenz, NodeSource

Grokking Asynchronous Work in Node.js

The ability to understand, inspect and debug asynchronous tasks in Node.js remains one of it's most glaring deficiencies. A typical production Node.js application will have hundreds of concurrent actions taking place under the hood simultaneously. This soup of activity results in a runtime that is difficult to inspect and debug.

But help is at hand via the new Async Hooks API is being enabled in Node.js to give us deeper insight to the mysteries of Node's asynchronous magic.

Thorsten Lorenz has worked closely with the primary author of Async Hooks, Trevor Norris to ready this new API for public release. In this talk he will explain how these new low-level features can be used to build tools and finally answer the question: what is my Node.js application doing??

The talk will include visual demos that expose the connected activity occurring inside your Node.js process in slow-motion.

About

Thorsten Lorenz
NodeSource
Senior Developer
Thorsten is a Jazz musician turned developer and is excited about Node.js and its community The fast turnaround from idea to working module has proven addictive for him and led to lots of modules which ended up on github and/or npm. He also contributes to other awesome open source efforts like browserify to which he added source map support. Lately he has been focusing on understanding the Node.js stack in more depth, focusing on libuv, v8 and is helping out with the addition of the async hooks feature to Node.js core itself. Please find previous talks of Thorsten at [http://thlorenz.com/talks/](http://thlorenz.com/talks/).

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