Not able to set response status code, without ExpressJs - node.js

Question

Not able to set response status code(after trying for 2 hours) in node.js 8.9
Tried : res.statusCode = 404; and res.writeHead(404,{});
Both didn't work.
Note: NOT using expressJs
Sample Code
var http = require('http');
//create a server object:
http.createServer(function (req, res) {
try{
res.write('Hie !'); //write a response to the client
res.statusCode = 404;
//res.writeHead(404,{});
res.end(); //end the response
}catch(e){
console.error(e);
}
}).listen(8080); //the server object listens on port 8080
Note: NOT using expressJs

Answer 1

Pretty simple, the statusCode has to be set before you write anything to the response stream, because otherwise it is an implicit 200 code.
Also, you should know that your try...catch block is useless in a callback scenario like that, unless you're doing some form of synchronous code that might fail.
If you update your code to the below, it'll work:
var http = require('http');
//create a server object:
http.createServer(function (req, res) {
res.statusCode = 404;
res.write('Hi!'); //write a response to the client
res.end(); //end the response
}).listen(8080); //the server object listens on port 8080
You could also use ES6 syntax, which some like better for various reasons:
const http = require('http');
http.createServer((req, res) => {
res.statusCode = 404;
res.write('Hi!');
res.end();
}).listen(8080);

Answer 2

As per Express V5
res.sendStatus(statusCode)
Express 5 no longer supports the signature res.send(status), where status is a number. Instead, use the res.sendStatus(statusCode) function, which sets the HTTP response header status code and sends the text version of the code: “Not Found”, “Internal Server Error”, and so on.
As per the Express (Version 4+) docs:
res.status(400);