Project Update: Next 10 years of Node.js

Understanding the needs of the Node.js constituencies

This post originally appeared on the Node.js Medium blog.

TLDR; We need your help to make sure the Next 10 years of Node.js are as successful as the first. We are launching a survey, you can take it here to help us do that. To get a bit more context on why this survey is important, read on….

Node.js had a very successful first 10 years of Node.js and the project is working to make the next 10 years even better. As part of that we’ve kicked off the Next-10 effort to document what we think is important for that to happen. You can follow the ongoing work of that team in this repo: https://github.com/nodejs/next-10.

Without a handy crystal ball, it turns out that it’s a lot harder than just diving in and discussing our favorite technologies to see what the keys to success are going to be. Are things like WebAssembly, Typescript, etc. important to the people who use Node.js? I guess we need to better understand/document who uses Node.js first…..

So far the team has spent most of its time laying the foundation on which we hope to base discussions around specific technologies.

We started by documenting our understanding of the project’s technical values as these will help us balance different aspects when necessary: https://github.com/nodejs/node/blob/master/doc/guides/technical-values.md. It’s not as simple as X overrides Y but instead highlight what key values need to be factored into decisions. For example, there was consensus that good developer experience has been a key part of the success of Node.js and that it’s important for future success that we maintain that.

Next the team documented the Node.js “Constituencies”. The people/groups who have a stake in the Node.js ecosystem. We captured these in CONSTITUENCIES.md are include:

• Direct end users
• Application operators
• Application Developers
• Back-end server authors
• Library/package authors
• Node.js core maintainers
• Organizations with investments in Node.js

We also documented what we thought was important to those “constituencies” in CONSTITUENCY-NEEDS.md.

We think we’ve got a good start, but at this point it only reflects the understanding of the small number of Next-10 team members contributing. At this point, we need your help to make sure we’ve got it right and/or update until we do. You can do that by:

• Taking the survey
• Getting involved in the Next-10 effort.

Thanks for reading and we hope to get your feedback through the survey or see you get involved in the ongoing work of the Next-10 team. Thanks in advance for your help.