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The one I’m talking about was a meeting with my boss in one of those conference rooms with clear walls, like a fishbowl, when she told me I didn’t get promoted. I’d had a fun, intense, wild ride working at a late-stage startup. But three years later, I felt like a shell of a person. I was commuting ninety minutes each way to work. I was feeling uninspired, dreading the relentless marketing campaign cycles that at one time were exciting.

Even though only 11 years old, Node.js has emerged to be one of the most popular web development frameworks in the last decade. I’m a big Javascript fanboy, and thanks to Node.js, I can write Javascript code outside the browser to create server-side web applications that are non-blocking, lightweight, fast, robust and scalable.

News teams often compete to break the story first. We think they should also compete on being the first to load their website. Let’s apply our web performance skills to a real world example: which news website has the best performance? Let’s solve this question by loading the homepages of some large news sites. A sampling of Alexa’s Top Sites gives four test candidates: Google News, CNN, The New York Times (NYT), and Fox News. Take a look, which feels fastest to you?