#Performance
19 articles — newest first.
- 8 min read
Worker threads in Node, and the pool you actually need
CPU-bound work blocks every request, not just its own. When a worker thread is the right tool over a child process or a queue, why a pool beats spawning per task, and what the copy costs.
- 8 min read
Parsing high-throughput text streams in Node without falling behind
Line-delimited protocols at thousands of messages a second: why split on every chunk is the bottleneck, handling messages that straddle a chunk boundary, and staying on buffers until the last moment.
- 8 min read
Keeping a long-running Node process flat for twelve hours
Short-lived scripts forgive everything. A process that runs all day does not. Allocation churn, buffer reuse, the caches you forgot were caches, and reading V8 heap statistics without guessing.
- 7 min read
Polling versus events for Node background work
A setInterval that finds nothing to do is not free. When polling is the right answer anyway, how to make it cheap, and the overlap bug that turns a five-second poll into a pile-up.
- 8 min read
Caching in Node: in-process, Redis, and the cost of both
A two-layer cache is fast until one instance serves stale data forever. Bounded in-process caches, when Redis earns its hop, stampede protection, and invalidation that actually invalidates.
- 8 min read
Profiling a React app from request to paint
A slow interaction has four possible homes: the network, the server, hydration, or your render. Reading the Performance panel and the React Profiler together tells you which one, before you optimise the wrong thing.
- 8 min read
Shrinking a React bundle: what actually moved the number
Bundle analysis past the treemap: which dependencies are worth replacing, why a barrel file quietly defeats tree-shaking, and the difference between smaller and faster.
- 7 min read
Web Workers, and the React jank they actually fix
Moving work off the main thread only helps if the main thread was the problem. How to tell, what the structured-clone tax costs you, and the transfer that makes workers worth it.
- 8 min read
Backpressure in Node, or why your queue ate all the memory
An unbounded queue is a memory leak with a scheduler. How Node streams signal backpressure, why pipeline beats pipe, and what to do when the producer genuinely cannot slow down.
- 7 min read
Faster JSON on Node hot paths, and when it is worth it
JSON.parse and JSON.stringify are fast until they are your bottleneck. Where the time actually goes, what fast-json-stringify and simdjson buy you, and how to avoid parsing at all.
- 8 min read
Finding event-loop stalls in Node before your users do
Async code that never resumes, and sync work that blocks everything else, look identical from outside. Event-loop delay monitoring, async hooks and a stall detector tell them apart.
- 8 min read
When useMemo actually helps in React 19, and how to measure it
A blunt, practical guide to useMemo in React 19: where it genuinely helps, where it’s noise, and how to profile renders before you cargo‑cult memoization.
- 7 min read
60fps live meters in React without re-rendering the tree
Streaming telemetry into a React UI at 60fps: why setState per frame is the wrong tool, and how a ring buffer plus a direct canvas write keeps the component tree still.
- 7 min read
A reproducible memory-regression workflow for Node
Catching Node memory regressions before production: a repeatable load script, three heap snapshots, and reading retainer paths instead of guessing at the biggest object.
- 7 min read
Serialization Adapters: How I Cut Payloads by 94%
Rich UI objects make terrible database records. A Serialization Adapter I built for IntegrateX split render model from transport record and cut payloads by 94%.
- 7 min read
MongoDB Aggregation Pipelines: Stage Order Is the Win
Profiling a clinical API taught me MongoDB aggregation pipeline optimization lives or dies on stage order: $match first on indexes, $lookup join performance, then explain.
- 8 min read
Compressing the Wire: A 94% Payload Reduction in React Flow
Node-graph editors serialize enormous JSON. A custom Serialization Adapter pattern that separates the React Flow render model from the transport record cut IntegrateX payloads by 94%.
- 7 min read
Semantic Caching That Actually Hits: Matching Meaning at the Edge
The streamerOS support agent kept re-answering the same question phrased ten ways, so I built a semantic cache that matches meaning, not the string.
- 6 min read
Cutting a Payload 94% With Custom Serialization Patterns
I cut a React Flow agent-graph payload 94% without losing a node — not with gzip, but by shaping a custom serialization format around the data: schema, not prose.