Before Your Code Runs - Node.js

Before Your Code Runs: Node.js

This post is part of the Before Your Code Runs series, cataloguing the hidden, implicit code execution surfaces in programming language runtimes and toolchains. Node.js and npm sit underneath a huge chunk of the modern web. It’s the runtime that made JavaScript a “real” backend language, and npm is the largest package registry in the world. That’s a lot of trust in a lot of code. Here’s roughly what happens when Node starts:...

March 29, 2026 Â· 20 min Â· Kumar Ashwin