Things I Regret About Node.js [video] • Hacker News Board

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

#71

Post by VeejayRampay » Wed, Jun 06, 2018, 5:04 PM UTC

sonofaplum wrote: post #42

VeejayRampay wrote: post #28

"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."

Ah my bad, completely misunderstood what he was saying.

Thanks for providing context.

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

#72

Post by billbrown » Wed, Jun 06, 2018, 5:05 PM UTC

davidw wrote: post #69

Some kind soul want to do a summary? I got through "uh hey, uh so" and remembered why I don't do videos.

Here is his PDF of slides - http://tinyclouds.org/jsconf2018.pdf

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

#73

Post by TheDong » Wed, Jun 06, 2018, 5:14 PM UTC

pvsukale3 wrote: post #60

Can anyone explain why he called Dart a complete failure? https://youtu.be/M3BM9TB-8yA?t=19m55s ps: I am a junior developer. I am taking up Dart to learn Mobile apps development using Flutter.

In terms of mindshare, ecosystem, and real usage, it's a failure (when compared to popular languages).

Regardless of how good a language it is, typescript fits in a similar space and is much more popular, has a more vibrant ecosystem, and is easier to migrate to.

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

#74

Post by Guillaume86 » Wed, Jun 06, 2018, 5:19 PM UTC

jaequery wrote: post #19

much respect to ryan for coming out like this. i used to think that he might have thought node was the bee’s knees and that callbacks and promises were sent from the gods. glad to hear him confirm what a lot of js devs are feeling right now with the wretchedness of the js callbacks, promises, and generators. there is a better way and im glad he is trying to do something about it.

He looked pretty ok with async/await (which uses Promises under the hood), one of the advertised features of his new project is top level await.

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

#75

Post by mschuetz » Wed, Jun 06, 2018, 5:21 PM UTC

thosakwe wrote: post #21

This was one of the more interesting software talks I've listened to recently. I like that it was very real - there are serious, serious problems with Node.js, and the fact that even the creator acknowledges these problems caught my attention. I'm also a long-time user of Dart, so when he brought that up, and compared TypeScript to its shortcomings, I definitely agreed. That being said, even with the Deno project, I'…

> performance and security from running JavaScript outside of a browser.

I'm just now building a node app to filter point clouds, so lots of number crunching. In two days I've got something in javascript that's faster than the C++ solution I've been working on for a week. Mostly because javascript/node makes it trivial to parallelize file IO while doing work in the main thread. This app reads 13 million points from 1400 files (~200mb), filters all points within a clip region, and writes the 12 million resulting points in a 300MB file, all in 1.6 seconds. (File reads were cached by OS and/or disk due to repeated testing, but file writes probably not)

My personal conclussion is that javascript can rival or even exceed the performance of C++, not because it's inherently faster, it's obviously not, but because it makes it much easier to write fast code. For the highest possible performance you'll defenitely want to use C++ but sometimes you'll have to spend multiple times the work to get there.

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

#76

Post by mschuetz » Wed, Jun 06, 2018, 5:27 PM UTC

uqimerioni wrote: post #49

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

Unlike Python, javascript did a lot to fix its issues in recent years. Python still can't get scoping right.

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

#77

Post by LargeWu » Wed, Jun 06, 2018, 5:29 PM UTC

rb808 wrote: post #64

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never understood why this is a benefit when the one language is - let's say - suboptimal in many ways. The interfaces between server- and client-side code should be well-defined and language-independent. You don't want the same people writing both, because it's harder to check that your API is working to spec if it doesn't get fully independent testing. There's also a lot of useful server-side optimisation and s…

> The interfaces between server- and client-side code should be well-defined and language-independent. They dont have to be and that is the point. If you write JS/TS front and back you can make everything much simpler with the associated benefits.

But in what specific way way does it make it simpler? What are the tangible benefits? I've been working in a Node/React environment for the last 2 years and there is virtually no overlap between the code we use on front- vs backend projects.

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

#78

Post by iamleppert » Wed, Jun 06, 2018, 5:36 PM UTC

He talks about not to add in features you think would be “cute” because they are always a mistake..

Then a few minutes later says “I thought being able to specify URLs in import statements would be cute..”

Uhh...Houston, we have a problem with this one.

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

#79

Post by WA9ACE » Wed, Jun 06, 2018, 5:37 PM UTC

myth_buster wrote: post #66

wereHamster wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

How about we link them to modules downloaded onto local file system instead, just in case of network issues.

How about a cli tool to cache and build those modules/native extensions all at once? We could call that Deno Package Manager.

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

#80

Post by LargeWu » Wed, Jun 06, 2018, 5:41 PM UTC

always_good wrote: post #68

uqimerioni wrote: post #49

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

How? Javascript has a lot going for it from async-everything to conveniences like destructuring. And it works in the browser and has things like Typescript. I have to find good reasons to use another dynamically-typed language over Javascript.

I would argue async-everything the biggest hassle with Javascript. Most of the time, I need things to run synchronously. Do this thing, then do that thing based on the result of the first thing. The need for async is the exception. So what we end up doing is expending extra effort forcing all the async stuff to run synchronously when that should be the default case.