Hard-won lessons: Five years with Node.js • Hacker News Board

Re: Hard-won lessons: Five years with Node.js

#121

Post by stickfigure » Thu, Apr 20, 2017, 5:35 AM UTC

thesmallestcat wrote: post #43

manyxcxi wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've got over a decade of professional experience in C#, Python, and Java. I'd consider myself a Java developer before all else, yet I still turn to Node.js for proof of concept projects because certain things are just quicker to implement. Here's the major caveat, out of, say 100+ PoC/prototype projects I've ever done, I've taken two to 'production'. I put production in quotes because they were actually internal ser…

Can you elaborate on the "major pain in the butt to monitor and keep Node.js running production-like" What sorts of issues did you face? Certainly .NET and Java have more tooling, but I haven't noticed a difference between keeping a Node process up as opposed to a Python one. Hard to compare to stateless PHP.

The default behavior for Node when there is an uncaught error is to crash the process, killing all requests in flight. Even if you go out of your way to stop this default behavior, errors still likely leave the process in an inconsistent state. Node can't just unwind a few stack frames like synchronous platforms.

Do you read JSON from ajax post bodies? Do you access fields in that JSON without sanity checking it? Try passing JSON that's missing one of those critical fields (as, say, a griefer might do). What happened to your app?

Re: Hard-won lessons: Five years with Node.js

#122

Post by cookiecaper » Thu, Apr 20, 2017, 5:37 AM UTC

lasfter wrote: post #54

TheCondor wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

V8 is a world class compiler. Compared to ruby, Python, Erlang, php and that ilk it is lightning quick. (Pypy is a good match for it but it's not main street and you can't just use any module.) in terms of performance and popularity, v8/node stand pretty much alone as far as dynamic non-compiled environments. JavaScript has a lighter weight feel than Java and the jvm stack. Single threaded with a top notch event reac…

I see some merits. I am not sure I buy using JavaScript based on performance/dev speed ratio though. Lua is even faster, lighter weight and has clean, logical semantics. I guess I'm just trying to decide if having a large talent pool and tons of modules is good enough.

I would watch it with that "large talent pool". As is typical in the language du jour, there are tons of worthless imposters going around selling Node.js skills. However, it's even worse in the case of JavaScript because since it uses the "same language", some people assume that light front-end scripting qualifies as real backend development experience.

"Tons of modules" is also a misnomer, because a much larger than normal portion of these are low-quality, small, and/or poorly maintained. Just the way it goes in the age of GitHub, where everyone wants a badge of honor in their repo list.

Re: Hard-won lessons: Five years with Node.js

#123

Post by hota_mazi » Thu, Apr 20, 2017, 5:39 AM UTC

ars wrote: post #109

hota_mazi wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The edit/refresh cycle starts to slow IDEA and Eclipse compile your code as you write it. And with Hotswap, you don't even need to redeploy anything. They also all offer REPL's that are much more sophisticated than anything Javascript has to offer. I think you haven't used a JVM language and its ecosystem in a very long time.

> And with Hotswap, you don't even need to redeploy anything. Except when you have to restart the JVM because you added a class or a whole bunch of other things that it can't hotswap in the new code.

Still better than any dynamically typed language (I mean any) where you always have to redeploy everything since none of these language support incremental compilation, let alone incremental reloading.

Re: Hard-won lessons: Five years with Node.js

#124

Post by skolsuper » Thu, Apr 20, 2017, 5:42 AM UTC

hota_mazi wrote: post #89

skolsuper wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're leaving out a lot when you say it'd take you "five minutes with a simple Maven/Gradle build". What's a maven? What's gradle? What's groovy and where can I learn it? I literally don't know the answers to these questions so the same task would take me hours, possibly days. Getting from zero to JSON api in node.js is fast by comparison. Note I am not arguing whether or not it's better in the long run to be the gu…

> You're leaving out a lot when you say it'd take you "five minutes with a simple Maven/Gradle build". What's a maven? What's gradle? What's groovy and where can I learn it? You have similar concerns with node (What's npm? etc...) These are peripheral and necessary knowledge on both platforms. > Getting from zero to JSON api in node.js is fast by comparison It's only fast because you already have the knowledge. Two e…

> It's only fast because you already have the knowledge.

No, when I said "from zero" I meant from zero knowledge.

> You have similar concerns with node (What's npm? etc...)

What's the "etc..."? Install node and you get npm with it.

Writing a REST service IS simpler with Node when going from zero, I know because I have done (or at least attempted) both from zero in the recent past.

> The idea that it's a faster to achieve in a dynamically typed language is a myth.

Doesn't seem like you're open to discussion on this

Re: Hard-won lessons: Five years with Node.js

#125

Post by alleycat » Thu, Apr 20, 2017, 5:44 AM UTC

TheCondor wrote: post #48

lasfter wrote: post #15

I can't imagine choosing to write Javascript on the server, but considering its popularity I'm wondering if I'm wrong. So I'm curious as to the reasons people chose Node.js and whether you would recommend it, anybody willing to share their experiences?

V8 is a world class compiler. Compared to ruby, Python, Erlang, php and that ilk it is lightning quick. (Pypy is a good match for it but it's not main street and you can't just use any module.) in terms of performance and popularity, v8/node stand pretty much alone as far as dynamic non-compiled environments. JavaScript has a lighter weight feel than Java and the jvm stack. Single threaded with a top notch event reac…

- Node wasn't designed for CPU intensive work, it's primarily for IO based work, which it frankly excels at, in terms of speed and scalability.

- To get around the 1GB cap use Buffers, they are outside the v8 heap.

Re: Hard-won lessons: Five years with Node.js

#126

Post by vacri » Thu, Apr 20, 2017, 5:45 AM UTC

ohstopitu wrote: post #37

lasfter wrote: post #15

I can't imagine choosing to write Javascript on the server, but considering its popularity I'm wondering if I'm wrong. So I'm curious as to the reasons people chose Node.js and whether you would recommend it, anybody willing to share their experiences?

I've used nodeJS at 3 of the past 4 startups I've worked at (currently using PHP). I had a hand in choosing it at all those 3 places and my main reasons boiled down to: 1. most devs know JS (so it's easier to hire & onboard new devs) 2. while everyone claims node's dependencies are hell, I love the choice available (although over time, it's tiring). 3. The community is generally awesome (helps during meetings, online…

> while everyone claims node's dependencies are hell, I love the choice available (although over time, it's tiring).

So... at one place I work, we use nodejs. There are so many modules added using so many files, that we ended up not being able to use our packaged application - extracting the package into a holding dir before moving into place meant that we ran out of inodes on the filesystem (stock 8GB ubuntu ext4 cloud image)! The filesystem could not hold two copies of our app, basically, due to inode exhaustion. The easy workaround was "increase the size of the disk", which seems silly given it's 80% free space.

This has apparently been fixed in recent times with flatter npm structures, but watching the nodejs community run into every single packaging roadblock that has been solved before is just disheartening.

Re: Hard-won lessons: Five years with Node.js

#127

Post by rapsey » Thu, Apr 20, 2017, 5:47 AM UTC

hota_mazi wrote: post #57

manyxcxi wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've got over a decade of professional experience in C#, Python, and Java. I'd consider myself a Java developer before all else, yet I still turn to Node.js for proof of concept projects because certain things are just quicker to implement. Here's the major caveat, out of, say 100+ PoC/prototype projects I've ever done, I've taken two to 'production'. I put production in quotes because they were actually internal ser…

> yet I still turn to Node.js for proof of concept projects because certain things are just quicker to implement. Why? Writing Java is really very fast these days, especially with IDE's. I can get a small web site serving JSON REST requests and memcache up in ten minutes with a simple Maven/Gradle build and full IDE integration.

> I can get a small web site serving JSON REST requests and memcache up in ten minutes with a simple Maven/Gradle build and full IDE integration

Java guys always say how they have really developed tooling and look down on other languages. The problem is those nice tools have become a hindrance as well. You can't develop in Java/Kotlin if you don't use those huge complicated tools.

I can't speak for all, but at least for me it prevents me from ever using Java tech. I can develop just fine using a lightweight editor in any of the languages I use. I don't need huge tools or complicated build systems. Because my languages have nice tooling that I can write manually and fully understand.

I tried using Kotlin and step one is always install Intellij.

Re: Hard-won lessons: Five years with Node.js

#128

Post by cookiecaper » Thu, Apr 20, 2017, 5:47 AM UTC

flukus wrote: post #112

lasfter wrote: post #15

I can't imagine choosing to write Javascript on the server, but considering its popularity I'm wondering if I'm wrong. So I'm curious as to the reasons people chose Node.js and whether you would recommend it, anybody willing to share their experiences?

> but considering its popularity I'm wondering if I'm wrong I think places like HN are probably distorting your view of how popular it is.

I don't know. It's definitely not displacing huge amounts of performance-critical Java or .NET yet, but it seems to be gaining inroads in the Real World from where I sit.

I think your average corporate developer is just trying to earn a paycheck and also has a petrified fear of meaningfully learning/using more than one language. Telling him "use this and you can use JavaScript everywhere!" sounds like a big difficulty improvement to him, especially since JavaScript is something he "already knows" and has been familiarized through years of being the exclusive client-side development platform.

Since this type of dev cares only about keeping his career on cruise control until retirement, Node.js is engaged with enthusiasm. In fact, it's one of the most enthusiastic receptions by BigCo devs that I've seen.

Re: Hard-won lessons: Five years with Node.js

#129

Post by pbreit » Thu, Apr 20, 2017, 5:51 AM UTC

hota_mazi wrote: post #73

pyrophane wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can understand it. If you want to just get something together quickly then dynamic languages do have an edge. They allow you to say "just give me whatever and if it fits, it fits" and if you aren't that concerned about it breaking you can build something extremely fast.

You're just repeating the same claim without any evidence. Why is it faster to write code in a dynamically typed language? Most modern statically typed languages have type inference so you don't even need to write type annotations for the most part, assuming these extra characters were the reason. So what's that mysterious reason that makes writing dynamically typed language faster?

Said dynamic language, not dynamically typed. Would be surprised if anyone considers Java more productive than Rails, Python (Django, Flask, etc) or Express.

Re: Hard-won lessons: Five years with Node.js

#130

Post by cdbattags » Thu, Apr 20, 2017, 5:53 AM UTC

The sheer number of responses/comments here (hell, even the article itself) justify Node by community alone in my opinion.

I like the fact that I've been able to follow along as it's matured and this gradual bit by bit learning process has made me a better developer because of it.