Speeding Up Your Node Sever With Rust

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Node has served you well: you spun up a prototype and iterated quickly, keeping up with the evolving requirements of a successful product. Nonetheless, as time goes on, cracks are starting to show up: an endpoint is slower than it needs to be, a data processing job that took seconds now takes almost an hour, and your infrastructure bill is growing too fast compared to the size of your user base. Engineers are starting to whisper: is it time for a rewrite? Should we pause feature development to rebuild everything on more solid foundations? That's an option, but it's expensive.

There's another path: rather than throwing away your entire Node codebase to start over, you analyze your application and isolate the performance-critical bits—the so-called "hot modules" where your application spends most of its time. You will rewrite those in Rust and package them as a Node native extension. This talks shows you how.

This talk has been presented at JSNation 2025, check out the latest edition of this JavaScript Conference.

FAQ

The speaker is Marco Ortevita, the founder and managing director of MainMetal.

The primary focus is on speeding up Node servers by using Rust to optimize performance-critical parts.

Node.js is considered easy to start with because it provides a short path from idea to prototype or MVP.

Node.js is not particularly efficient for CPU-bound tasks and is limited by being single-threaded, which can max out a CPU core easily.

Marco proposes using native modules written in Rust to offload performance-critical tasks, allowing the rest of the Node.js application to remain unchanged.

Rust is preferred over C because it prevents common pitfalls like manual memory management errors, offering safer and more reliable performance.

NAPI helps in writing native modules in Rust by handling project creation, compilation, and integrating JavaScript with Rust code.

Rust uses compile-time memory management with an ownership system, unlike JavaScript's garbage collection and C's manual memory management.

Rust offers improved performance, especially for CPU-bound tasks, and reduces memory usage without the risks associated with C.

Yes, Rust code can be compiled to WebAssembly, making it reusable in browsers or edge functions.

Marco Otte-Witte
Marco Otte-Witte
21 min
16 Jun, 2025

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Video Summary and Transcription
Talk on improving Node server efficiency with Rust. Node's ease of use but inefficiency for some tasks. Example of a slow express server handling high scores inefficiently. Native modules in Rust provide a safer alternative to C for improving efficiency. Rust empowers developers to build reliable and efficient software, with strong static typing and immutability by default. Rust's result and option enums handle error and value absence cases. The ownership system in Rust ensures safe memory management without manual intervention. The importance of ownership in Rust for memory management and error prevention. Writing native modules in Rust with NAPI for easier project creation and code integration. Exploring the efficiency gains of using Rust's native modules for faster performance and reduced risks in development.
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