The battle of the event loops

We all love a good event loop. The libuv event loop has to be one of the most discussed topics when it comes to Node.js. That said, there’s a new kid on the block, with a completely different approach to asynchrony that challenges some of the common underlying assumptions people make when thinking about how asynchrony works under the hood.

Ujjwal will discuss both external and internal aspects of libuv, comparing them to those of tokio, the event loop that powers deno, with a special emphasis on performance. We will discover the cases in which one outperforms the other, and how both employ different approaches to solving, essentially, the same problem.

You will come away with a deep appreciation of event loops, a thorough knowledge of how they work internally, and profound respect for how both projects strive harder each day to make sure JavaScript code is as performant as ever. You will also spot certain patterns which are handled and optimized for differently in both the loops and how to make the best of your favorite runtime.