Every Node.js developer has, at some point, built a “distributed system” that turned into a distributed headache. You start with Kafka and a few services, and before long, you’re juggling retries, compensations, and correlation IDs like it’s 3 AM in production.

In this episode of The Node (& More) Banter, Luca Maraschi & Matteo Collina break down the workflow orchestration wars — from traditional message queues to modern “durable execution” frameworks like Temporal and Vercel’s new “use workflow” directive.

We’ll explore:

✅ Why every complex Node.js system eventually reimplements a workflow engine

✅ The pain points of Kafka-style event choreography (and how we got here)

✅ How Temporal brings “workflow as code” to JavaScript

✅ Why Vercel’s “use workflow” might make durability a language-level concept

✅ When to choose Kafka, Temporal, or “use workflow” — and how to mix them

If you’ve ever asked yourself, “Why is this microservice talking to that one?”, this episode will help you see how the next generation of workflow tools is making distributed logic finally… durable.