Performance monitoring enables early detection of bottlenecks, memory leaks, and degraded responsiveness in Node.js applications before they impact users. As the creator of CoreUI, a widely used open-source UI library, I’ve implemented performance monitoring in production Node.js services throughout my 11 years of backend development. The most effective approach is using Node.js built-in performance hooks and process metrics to track key indicators. This method provides real-time visibility into application health without external dependencies and minimal performance overhead.

Logging provides visibility into application behavior, capturing errors, debugging information, and operational events for troubleshooting and monitoring. As the creator of CoreUI, a widely used open-source UI library, I’ve implemented logging in Node.js applications throughout my 11 years of backend development. The most straightforward approach is using console methods with different log levels for various message types. This method provides immediate logging output without external dependencies, suitable for development and simple applications.