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Things I Regret About Node.js [video]

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Re: Things I Regret About Node.js [video]

#51
post #46

Interesting that he's unsure about Go. Would be nice to hear about why. One huge strength about Node (&Deno) is having the same language and tools on the front end and back end. Its a huge benefit to have a team on one language, even if it might not be the optimal choice. I'm not sure if that is the problem he had with Go though.

The repo itself says it's "Segfaulty," which is far less likely in safe Rust, for example. Perhaps that's why he mentioned it as a candidate. Regardless, it sounds like he was doing a lot of work in Go, so perhaps it was just the too that was closest to hand for him when he decided to build the prototype.

Re: Things I Regret About Node.js [video]

#52
post #46

Interesting that he's unsure about Go. Would be nice to hear about why. One huge strength about Node (&Deno) is having the same language and tools on the front end and back end. Its a huge benefit to have a team on one language, even if it might not be the optimal choice. I'm not sure if that is the problem he had with Go though.

It might have to do with the overhead of calling into C/C++. Since a project like deno will have to do a lot of interfacing with V8, a language like Rust wouldn't have the overhead of cgo when dealing with the embedded VM. Also, while go routines are one of the strengths of go, they don't necessarily play well with concurrency constructs in other languages. Since a project like deno will probably be keeping Node's single-threaded, evented model of concurrency and using libuv (also a C interface), that basically means avoiding go routines.

To your point, though, you'd still use basically the same language on the server and client, since deno runs typescript and typescript can compile to run in a browser. The Go side would take the place of Node's native modules, which currently have a C++ interface.

Re: Things I Regret About Node.js [video]

#53

WTF slide brought be here. In the world where Python and Ruby exist - calling javascript best dynamic language is nothing but heresy.

I like all three languages. I spend most of my time with JS because it runs in the browser with no overhead, and it has the highest quality VMs.

Re: Things I Regret About Node.js [video]

#54

"And then there were people adding modules. I thought to myself, this projet is done now. So wrong." Seriously why are we as a community still entertaining those outlandish statements and attitudes? If you heard that sentence as a non-tech person, you'd swear modules is a computer virus or something, that it's so inherently bad that it's not even worth discussing. Props to Ryan for his amazing work, but come on let's…

Thats not what he meant. He was not saying "People are adding modules, modules are bad, this project is ruined, [modules are] so wrong." He was saying, "People are creating modules, people are building on top of my work, this project is COMPLETE. [I was] so wrong."

I'm glad you elaborated on this because I also interpreted it as an overly negative attitude towards modules. He was definitely a little nervous while talking!

Re: Things I Regret About Node.js [video]

#56
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not OP, but a couple guesses off the top of my head: * It becomes a more painful process to upgrade dependencies (have to find/replace across your codebase). * Many versions of the same library get pulled in. If you depend on package@1.5.3 and a dependency of yours depends on package@1.5.4, that's twice the dependency size as compared to both just using 1.5.4. This matters more in the case of web app bundle size thou…

You could have an entry file for your dependencies (let's say dependencies.ts) and reexport everything from there. When you have to update, you only have to upgrade it in the entry file and you can avoid multiple versions.

Hm, how about we call that file package.json?

Re: Things I Regret About Node.js [video]

#57

The first post in this issue has a summary of some performance problems with node.js: https://github.com/ry/deno/issues/162 Though, it's posted in a confrontational way so the conversation deteriorates.

All I could think while reading that issue was "you're not wrong, you're just an asshole."

Re: Things I Regret About Node.js [video]

#58
post #25

The first post in this issue has a summary of some performance problems with node.js: https://github.com/ry/deno/issues/162 Though, it's posted in a confrontational way so the conversation deteriorates.

No, that thread is everything that is wrong with open source.

Something similar happened from Linus Torvalds just recently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17242103

Is being a dick pretty common in open source discussion?

Re: Things I Regret About Node.js [video]

#59

i have always really enjoyed listen to ryan speak. he seems very humble for all of his accomplishments.

Agree completely.

Although one of the more interesting "talks" I ever heard him give was a discussion on promises. I was lucky enough to be in (the ridiculously long) line behind him waiting for food at NodeConf in 2012 and he and an engineer from Microsoft had a pretty spirited discussion that explored the subject in way more depth than I had previously thought possible. Ironically, given that he now considers the removal of promises to be a mistake, it was the engineer from Microsoft who took the pro-promises side of that argument.

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