setImmediate vs. nextTick

Question

Node.js version 0.10 was released today and introduced setImmediate. The API changes documentation suggests using it when doing recursive nextTick

Answer 1

As an illustration

import fs from 'fs';
import http from 'http';

const options = {
  host: 'www.stackoverflow.com',
  port: 80,
  path: '/index.html'
};

describe('deferredExecution', () => {
  it('deferredExecution', (done) => {
    console.log('Start');
    setTimeout(() => console.log('TO1'), 0);
    setImmediate(() => console.log('IM1'));
    process.nextTick(() => console.log('NT1'));
    setImmediate(() => console.log('IM2'));
    process.nextTick(() => console.log('NT2'));
    http.get(options, () => console.log('IO1'));
    fs.readdir(process.cwd(), () => console.log('IO2'));
    setImmediate(() => console.log('IM3'));
    process.nextTick(() => console.log('NT3'));
    setImmediate(() => console.log('IM4'));
    fs.readdir(process.cwd(), () => console.log('IO3'));
    console.log('Done');
    setTimeout(done, 1500);
  });
});

will give the following output

Start
Done
NT1
NT2
NT3
TO1
IO2
IO3
IM1
IM2
IM3
IM4
IO1

I hope this can help to understand the difference.

Updated:

Callbacks deferred with process.nextTick() run before any other I/O event is fired, while with setImmediate(), the execution is queued behind any I/O event that is already in the queue.

Node.js Design Patterns, by Mario Casciaro (probably the best book about node.js/js)