Multithreaded Javascript

Preface

Bryan and I (Thomas) first met during my interview at the San Francisco branch for DeNA, a Japanese mobile game development company. Apparently most of the upper management was going to say no, but after the two of us hung out at a Node.js meetup later that night, Bryan went and convinced them to give me an offer.

While at DeNA, Bryan and I worked on writing reusable Node.js modules so that game teams could build out their game servers, combining components as appropriate to suit the needs of their game. Performance was something we were always measuring, and mentoring game teams on performance was a part of the job; our servers were continuously scrutinized by developers in an industry that traditionally relied upon C++.

The two of us would work together in other capacities as well. Another such role was at a small security startup named Intrinsic where we focused on hardening Node.js apps at such a complete and granular level that I doubt the world will ever see another product like it. Performance tuning was a huge concern for that product as well since customers didn’t want to take a hit to their throughput. We spent many hours running benchmarks, poring over flamegraphs, and digging through internal Node.js code. Had the worker threads module been available in all the versions of Node.js that our customers demanded, I have no doubt we would have incorporated it into the product.

We’ve also worked together in nonemployment capacities as well. NodeSchool SF is one such ...