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Written by: developervsandhu

Technology and Gadgets

From Express to NestJS: My Early Experience

As a developer who has spent most of their time working with Express, jumping into NestJS felt like stepping into a completely different environment. At first, I honestly thought, "This is harder than I expected." But now, after spending some time learning and experimenting, I can say — it's actually pretty great.

Here’s how it’s been going so far.

👋 The Initial Confusion

Coming from Express, I was used to writing quick APIs using minimal setup. With NestJS, the first time I saw:

@Controller()
export class AppController {
  constructor(private readonly appService: AppService) {}
}}

My reaction was: “Why do I need all this to return a simple response?”

NestJS uses decorators, modules, and a layer of abstraction that can be confusing when you're used to writing routes directly in Express. But once you understand the structure, it starts making sense.

🔍 What’s Different?

1. Project Structure

NestJS is highly opinionated — which means it wants you to structure things in a certain way. Instead of having everything in a single file or folder, you have:

controllers
services
modules

At first, it felt like too much boilerplate. But now I see the benefits — especially as your app grows. It’s organized, readable, and easy to scale.

2. Dependency Injection

NestJS uses a concept called dependency injection — which, in simple terms, lets you inject reusable logic (like a service) into a controller or another service.

In Express, I usually had to import everything manually and manage instances myself. With NestJS, this is handled automatically — and it feels really clean once you get used to it.

3. Decorators Everywhere

Decorators like @Controller(), @Get(), @Post(), @Injectable() add metadata to your code so NestJS knows what to do with it.

They can be a bit intimidating at first, but they actually make your code easier to read once you're familiar.

Compared to app.get('/profile', handler) in Express, it feels more structured and modular.

🎯 What I Like About NestJS So Far

The separation of concerns makes the code easier to maintain.
It encourages good practices from the beginning.
It’s great for building scalable APIs.
You don’t have to set up everything from scratch — a lot is already built-in (validation, guards, interceptors, etc.).

💥 What’s Been Challenging

Getting used to modules and how everything fits together.
Understanding when and how to use decorators properly.
Adapting my Express mindset to a more structured NestJS one.

But honestly, these are the kinds of challenges that lead to better understanding and growth.

🤔 Final Thoughts

If you’re comfortable with Express but looking for a more structured framework that helps you build larger applications in a cleaner way, NestJS is a solid choice. Yes, the learning curve is real. But once you get used to it, you’ll start to appreciate how much it helps in the long run.

I’m still learning — and that’s okay. Every day I build something small, break something, fix it, and learn something new.

And that’s the fun part. 😄

Let me know if you’re learning NestJS too — I’d love to hear your experience!

From Express to NestJS: My Early Experience