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Is Express.js dying?

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Re: Is Express.js dying?

#51

Post by jacquesm »

creamyhorror wrote: post #27
heyadayo wrote: post #23

The thread actually represents a discussion between the most active maintainer (dougwilson) and various employees of IBM who now own and oversee the project, with a few confused third parties chiming in. It looks like IBM is making some predictable mistakes, which have disillusioned dougwilson to some large extent. Simultaneously they are being fairly inflexible at fixing those mistakes and ultimately forcing abandon…

Here's some history, from what I've read. The original discussion of the transfer of the Express repo's ownership to Strongloop occurred here in June 2014: https://github.com/strongloop/express/issues/2264 Back then, many in the community were surprised by the sponsorship (sale?) of the project and called for the repo to be transferred to the Expressjs org instead. So the question of ownership has been a long-running…

This is one of the pitfalls of contributing to an open source project, sooner or later (assuming the project gains traction) some company will acquire the project for what for them is peanuts and in the process they'll do what they can to keep the current project the one people will flock to.

That's why we have MariaDB and a whole raft of other projects that are technically closely related to the original and maintained by a number of people that were originally associated with the project but that moved on after an acquisition by forking the project.

Companies as a rule do not like the kind of autonomy that is associated with FOSS.

Maybe this is a solution in this case too, Doug could in theory fork it under a different name and just keep it running (unless his contract prevents him from doing that).

Re: Is Express.js dying?

#52

Post by brobinson »

foldr wrote: post #8

It's not the cool web framework for Node any more. I don't think it's going to "die" in the sense that existing express applications are going to be impossible to maintain any time soon.

What is the current cool web framework for Node? (I'm not a node user at the moment, but I've seen Express a lot)

Re: Is Express.js dying?

#53

Post by pavlov »

marricks wrote: post #44
pavlov wrote: post #41

Maybe there just isn't that much left to do? I've used Express a lot over the years, and I can't think of anything right now that it's missing. I'll be happy if it's going to be stable from now on, with no breaking changes. More fundamentally, I feel the "web framework" doesn't need to be an exciting piece of the stack anymore, like was the case maybe ten years ago. Routing URLs and gluing together middleware doesn't…

The discussion brings up that there is some core functionality that should be added to just have Express keep pace, mainly implementing ES6 changes and supporting HTTP/2 (which some say should just be a new framework). Those are not easy maintenance things to do, and certainly are important.

If it were up to me, I'd leave both of those to a different framework.

There's nothing in ES6 that warrants breaking Express's compatibility with older runtimes. And HTTP 2.0 probably is better off in a new framework that's designed from scratch for it. (I'm not a great fan of HTTP 2.0 and would rather see Express unburdened by its complexity.)

Re: Is Express.js dying?

#54

Post by qudat »

I use expressjs with es6 and have zero issues with it. The only thing that is required from my point of view is a small shim for catching promise errors.

What about es6 isn't compatible with express?

Re: Is Express.js dying?

#56

Post by jnbiche »

jnbiche wrote: post #31
ctmkpp wrote: post #9

Clickbait. Express.js is not dying. At all. It is being very much actively worked on by some of the hardest working maintainers and contributors. Express.js is actually a combination of various modules. If you want to see the work being done, go to those individual modules.

Did you read the thread? No one who read the thread would think that there are hard-working maintainers who have been working hard on the project. That's clear. However, there are very clearly some governance issues that those of us using Express or evaluating it should be aware of.

Oops, I obviously meant to write that no one would think that there "aren't" hard-working maintainers. There definitely are hard-working maintainers. But the government issues are serious.

Re: Is Express.js dying?

#57

Post by pori »

applecore wrote: post #47

It's simple. Everyone has switched to either Koa (designed by the team behind Express) or, more likely, a client-side framework like React.

I'm not sure if everyone is switching over to Koa. It doesn't seem like it's on too many people's radar. That said, the most hardcore developers I know (including myself) do love and use it. At least, it looks that way here on the East Coast where everyone is still focusing on hiring for Express apps.

All that said, Koa is pretty great and teams should adopt it.

Re: Is Express.js dying?

#58

Post by ep103 »

AustinG08 wrote: post #20
bryanlarsen wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's giving you pause? According to the link, Express is undergoing extensive and active development...

After reading that entire thread, it seems to be that IBM/Strongloop wants to maintain ownership of the project without contributing the resources. They expect dougwilson to continue running the project but he doesn't want to unless it is under the expressjs organization or something like that. Apparently IBM threw a few guys into discovery on the project a few weeks ago and they may actively get involved, but it is…

If your comment isn't a good (microcosm-ish) description of IBM and all their internal incompetency issues in general right now, I don't know what is.

Re: Is Express.js dying?

#59

Post by warfangle »

brobinson wrote: post #52
foldr wrote: post #8

It's not the cool web framework for Node any more. I don't think it's going to "die" in the sense that existing express applications are going to be impossible to maintain any time soon.

What is the current cool web framework for Node? (I'm not a node user at the moment, but I've seen Express a lot)

Koa is the new hotness.

Re: Is Express.js dying?

#60

Post by quicklyfrozen »

DiabloD3 wrote: post #16
ctmkpp wrote: post #9

Clickbait. Express.js is not dying. At all. It is being very much actively worked on by some of the hardest working maintainers and contributors. Express.js is actually a combination of various modules. If you want to see the work being done, go to those individual modules.

I actually have to agree with this. It seems like some semi-political debate about how one guy left and they don't like the direction the project is headed, but it is clearly not dying. I've flagged it for mod review, I'm not sure if this should be on the front page, it doesn't seem like it meets the requirements for HN.

That one guy is the only one currently contributing code (a slight exaggeration, but very slight).

That info by itself seems HN worthy as many of us have likely used Express as the "safe" choice when starting a new project. Time to rethink that...

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