Stop using express.js

Sebastian Wessel - May 31 '23 - - Dev Community

I'm so tiered of these "Build your first REST-API with Express.js" articles.
Seems like, writing such an article is the first thing you need to do, and the first application you need to implement is an Epress.js application.

But why?
There are so many real cool frameworks out there, which might do a much better job than Express.js, with support for state-of-the-art patterns like async-await and great communities.
Express.js 5 with async-await is announced since years, and the widely used version 4 is legacy code.
Even if version 5 becomes available in some years or centuries, you probably will need to migrate your code base.

Because of this, I will share some cool frameworks with you. Maybe you like to try them out and write your next article about something, which was not written a hundred times before.

Feathers

Feathers is some kind of unicorn and is focusing on build REST-APIs and real-time applications.
Pretty cool concept and simple to use.

Feathers.js

Hono

My lovely Hono!
If you're looking for some lightweight and fast way to build HTTP server, you must definitely try out Hono.
If you know Express.js or similar, you will exactly know how to use Hono.
It also supports different runtimes like Bun and Deno and allows you to write software, which benefits from the runtime benefits, without the need to re-write things.

Hono

Elysia

Build to get the benefits of Bun runtime, it is a real promising framework.

Elysia

Fastify, Restify, Hapi

If it comes to REST-API, you should definitly look into the "Three-Kings".
They are made for building REST-APIs, and they are also some kind of "way-to-go" with all these features, modules, plugins and communities.

Restify & Fastify
Hapi

Koa (dead)

Koa was a more modern version of Express.js developed by the team of Express.js developers. It provides support for async-await.
But it seems to be no longer maintained by someone

Koa

And much, much more is out there!
So please, if you write beginners tutorials, don't stick to legacy Express.js.

If you come around some cool framework - please let me and the world know about it!
The Frontend guys are having so much progress with React, Angular, Vue, Svelte & Co over the last years, and we backend guys are sticking still in 2010?

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