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“Node.js is one of the worst things to happen to the software industry” (2012)

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Re: “Node.js is one of the worst things to happen to the software industry” (2012)

#31

Post by [deleted] »

hungerstrike wrote: post #30
konschubert wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it's funny, isn't it? Callbacks were advertised as the reason why one should use node. They're a foundation of JS. Then they got covered up by promises. And now, with async await, we're back full circle towards the style of a more linear programming language such as python.

> Callbacks were advertised as the reason why one should use node. They're a foundation of JS. Where can I see that advertisement? I'm pretty sure that the main selling point of Node.js is and always has been that you can easily share code with the browser.

[deleted]

Re: “Node.js is one of the worst things to happen to the software industry” (2012)

#32

Post by hungerstrike »

oceanghost wrote: post #5

Javascript is the Visual Basic of the 201x's. Like Visual Basic-- it convinced people who otherwise had no idea what they were doing that they were programmers. It's fun for the rest of us CS/Math guys to sit back and watch you JS programmers discover things we learned 40 years ago. :-)

Yeah because CS/Math professionals have never use VB or JS. I'm quite sure that many Wall Street quants and Fintechs who use VBA in Excel to do their job today will find your statements hilarious.

Some of the worst code that I've ever seen has been written by hard maths people.

> It's fun for the rest of us CS/Math guys to sit back and watch you JS programmers discover things we learned 40 years ago. :-)

Such as?

Re: “Node.js is one of the worst things to happen to the software industry” (2012)

#33

Post by abritinthebay »

konschubert wrote: post #17
sanxiyn wrote: post #3

The main argument is that "of all the ways of doing concurrency, callbacks are by far the worst". I tend to agree. Now we have async/await, I think there is no problem.

But it's funny, isn't it? Callbacks were advertised as the reason why one should use node. They're a foundation of JS. Then they got covered up by promises. And now, with async await, we're back full circle towards the style of a more linear programming language such as python.

It wasn’t that callbacks we’re a selling point, it’s that asynchronous execution was.

Callback were just the way of doing that in JS. Now we have Promises + Async/Await as sugar around what is basically the same pattern

ie - cb(err, result) is not that different than .catch(err).then(result) but it’s much nicer to develop with.

Of course now you can do the same in imperative try/catch for with await so yes, we’re back to similar syntax but a whole lot change under the hood and provided a much more performant concurrent model

Re: “Node.js is one of the worst things to happen to the software industry” (2012)

#34

Post by oceanghost »

hungerstrike wrote: post #32
oceanghost wrote: post #5

Javascript is the Visual Basic of the 201x's. Like Visual Basic-- it convinced people who otherwise had no idea what they were doing that they were programmers. It's fun for the rest of us CS/Math guys to sit back and watch you JS programmers discover things we learned 40 years ago. :-)

Yeah because CS/Math professionals have never use VB or JS. I'm quite sure that many Wall Street quants and Fintechs who use VBA in Excel to do their job today will find your statements hilarious. Some of the worst code that I've ever seen has been written by hard maths people. > It's fun for the rest of us CS/Math guys to sit back and watch you JS programmers discover things we learned 40 years ago. :-) Such as?

Concurrency.

But I think you're reading more into what I said than what was meant.

Re: “Node.js is one of the worst things to happen to the software industry” (2012)

#35

Post by hungerstrike »

oceanghost wrote: post #34
hungerstrike wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah because CS/Math professionals have never use VB or JS. I'm quite sure that many Wall Street quants and Fintechs who use VBA in Excel to do their job today will find your statements hilarious. Some of the worst code that I've ever seen has been written by hard maths people. > It's fun for the rest of us CS/Math guys to sit back and watch you JS programmers discover things we learned 40 years ago. :-) Such as?

Concurrency. But I think you're reading more into what I said than what was meant.

I just don't think it's fair to say that "JS programmers are just discovering concurrency".

Libuv, the I/O engine for Node.js is written in C and Node.js itself is a mixture of C, C++ and JavaScript. Plenty of other "JS programmers" including myself have also been programmers of C, C++, .NET and many other environments all of which have well defined concurrency stories. None of these people fit your profile.

> But I think you're reading more into what I said than what was meant.

Sorry, but this comment conveys no useful information to me. Your original statements were quite explicit.

Re: “Node.js is one of the worst things to happen to the software industry” (2012)

#36

Post by vikramkrishnan »

rektide wrote: post #29
vikramkrishnan wrote: post #26

I don't think node.js per se is the worst thing. However, the way it is used, particularly what I believe to be a misguided attempt to do "full stack development" is really terrible. And it is not the first time that we have made this mistake. The whole Java on the client side blew up in our faces. If bosses really understood that client side and server side are two different problems with different mindsets and spec…

"However, the way it is used, particularly what I believe to be a misguided attempt to do "full stack development" is really terrible." I'm not sure what way you believe it is being used?

I am referring to the following mental algorithm I see being used by managers and some devs: 1. My front end guy does JS 2. My backend guy costs money 3. Let me remove 2 and get 1 to do both, it is all JS anyway; completely ignoring that the way you build the two is fundamentally different, with different mindsets. Language is just a small part of the equation. The claim that having a single language on FE and BE will save cash is simplistic and misguided. It is like saying since my kitchen utensils are built of stainless steel and aircraft carriers are built of stainless steel, I will get Le Crueset to manufacture my aircraft carriers

Re: “Node.js is one of the worst things to happen to the software industry” (2012)

#37

Post by oceanghost »

hungerstrike wrote: post #35
oceanghost wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Concurrency. But I think you're reading more into what I said than what was meant.

I just don't think it's fair to say that "JS programmers are just discovering concurrency". Libuv, the I/O engine for Node.js is written in C and Node.js itself is a mixture of C, C++ and JavaScript. Plenty of other "JS programmers" including myself have also been programmers of C, C++, .NET and many other environments all of which have well defined concurrency stories. None of these people fit your profile. > But I…

I expressed myself poorly. Please accept my apologies.

I did not mean everyone who writes JS is a bad programmer. That's not only a dogmatic statement but demonstrably false.

However, people who shouldn't be programmers have to land somewhere and right now its JS.-- just like VB was back in the day.

It's clear to me at least, that JS has been stretched beyond its abstraction level. It's ripe for replacement, its just that attempts to replace it have been closed solutions, so JS continues.

Re: “Node.js is one of the worst things to happen to the software industry” (2012)

#39

Post by zamber »

dozzie wrote: post #27
emilsedgh wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody loved node because of callbacks. Node was the only ecosystem where everything was written with concurrency in mind.

> Node was the only ecosystem where everything was written with concurrency in mind. Yes, sure, if you ignore all the other programming languages, like Erlang, which is older even than first hacked versions of JavaScript.

JS was drafted in a week.

Node is a band aid on top of a tech stack that webdev is stuck with.

Node was done with concurrency in mind, JS wasn't.

Compare apples to apples:

How does Erlang's ecosystem stack up when it comes to concurrency? How does it compare to Node? Do you even care given your prejudices regarding JS?

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