Node.js can be a powerful platform used in the right situations, but it also has more footguns than PHP does for new developers. Asynchronous programming style, concurrency issues, error handling, the event loop, and no default timeouts for HTTP requests or network calls will give new developers more than their fair share of troubles and can cause issues that are difficult to debug and reproduce. This talk gives a brief introduction to node.js and the event loop model (don’t block the event loop!), and covers common pitfalls when using node.js with simple and practical solutions.