In a production build, it's important to exclude devDependencies as they are typically only needed for development and testing. Including them in production builds can increase the size of the application unnecessarily. Option (2) is a good practice, but not directly related to managing dependencies for production. Option (1) is incorrect as including all dependencies in devDependencies is not a best practice for production builds. Option (4) is risky as it may introduce compatibility issues.

In Node.js, you can create a buffer instance using the Buffer.alloc(size) method, where size is the desired size of the buffer in bytes. The new Buffer() constructor is deprecated, and the other options are not valid ways to create a buffer in Node.js.

Full-text search is most appropriately used when searching for specific keywords within a large body of text, such as searching for documents or articles containing certain words or phrases. It allows for complex text-based queries, making it ideal for content-heavy applications.

In JavaScript, you can use the unshift method to add an item to the beginning of an array. The push method adds an item to the end of an array. append and insert are not native array methods in JavaScript.

In Express.js, middleware functions are executed in the order they are defined. If some errors are not being caught by your error-handling middleware, it's crucial to check the order of middleware execution. Errors should be handled after they are thrown, so make sure your error-handling middleware comes after the routes that might throw errors.

Using the BigInt data type in JavaScript, you can represent integers larger than 2^128 - 1. BigInts are not restricted by the usual 53-bit limit of regular JavaScript numbers (doubles), allowing you to work with much larger integers.

High network latency can be considered a performance bottleneck in a web application. Slow data transfer between the client and server due to network latency can significantly impact the application's performance. Code comments, proper error handling, and modular code structure, while important for code quality, are not typically performance bottlenecks.

To compare two buffers in Node.js, you should use the compare() method. The == operator and === with string conversion won't provide accurate results, and there's no isEqual() function for buffers in Node.js.

Image data is usually sent to the server in Base64 format when uploading files in a web application. This format allows binary data (like images) to be represented as a string, making it easier to transmit as part of an HTTP request. The other options (JSON, XML, and CSV) are not typically used for sending binary data like images.

One common technique used for optimizing database queries is query caching. It involves storing frequently used query results in memory, reducing the need to re-execute the same query, and improving response times.