Tag Archives: NodeJS

How To Update Node.js on MacOS: Hindsight on Old Mac

Updating packages and apps on MacOS is usually a trivial task. There are several avenues available, depending on the personal preference and degree of familiarity with various tools available on Mac. Now consider a case for updating Node.js (and subsequently npm) on MacOS. What are the options?

tl;dr Updating Node.js with lightweight package manager such as n is less error prone especially for older MacOS version

Let’s start by listing the options on our perusal.

Option 1: Download the installer from nodejs.org and install the binary

This option is ideal for the first installation. It is less ideal for update / version upgrade or if we want to maintain several nodejs versions on the machine. Continue reading

How to Open Multibyte CSV File Containing East Asian Characters (Chinese, Japanese, Korean) in Excel on MacOS

Excel on MacOS has its own quirk when dealing with CSV file. If you have a CSV file that is encoded with UTF-8 and contains entries in multibyte characters from East Asian languages such as Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, opening the file in Excel on MacOS may give you some surprise. Instead of showing the East Asian characters, Excel will display garbled characters.

Let us a run experiment to explain this case. We will use Node JS to create a CSV file, encode the file using UTF-8 and then try to open it using Excel on MacOS. Continue reading

Quick Tip: Installing NodeJS 8 on CentOS 7

Node JS has been gaining more popularity as the server-side runtime environment of choice these recent years. The asynchronous event-driven feature built into Node JS can be considered a killer feature that may flatter a system architect planning to build a high-performing server-side component serving HTTP webservice to the clients.

Node JS is cross-platform. The executable can run on major OSes that include Windows, GNU Linux, and Mac OS. Having a wide OS support further accelerates Node JS adoption within the server-side technology stack. Continue reading