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Things I Regret About Node.js [video]

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

#371

Post by oh-kumudo »

pknopf wrote: post #274
jrochkind1 wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is a story that gets repeated lots of times in our world of open source software dev. 1. X is SO bloated and poorly engineered full of bad legacy decisions. 2. We can totally do better let's invent a new thing, Y! 3. Wow, Y is so clean and fast and understandable. 4. But it doesn't do this thing a bunch of people reasonably really need... let's add it. (repeat 3 and 4 a few hundred times) 5. Y is so bloa…

How do you break the loop?

I don't think we have to.

Loop, as it might seem, doesn't mean there is no progress made in between.

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

#372

Post by Quarrelsome »

rubber_duck wrote: post #369
ahansen wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe this is what Microsoft is trying to do with .NET Core. It's been successful so far, though they aren't at feature parity yet.

C# is very verbose and tedious compared to more expressive languages - having to deal with CLR types/API at runtime while using a language with very limited expressiveness (C#) is not very productive. It's better than Java if that's what you're aiming at - but JVM has an incredible ecosystem of stuff that works - much larger than .NET core which is not very mature in many areas (recently had to revert to .NET 4.7 bec…

> using a language with _very_ limited expressiveness (C#) is not very productive.

o_0. Think you need to check yourself mate.

I believe the productiveness of more "expressive" language tends to be undermined by the loss of productivity that occurs when you're compelled to write blog posts or comment on hacker news about how amazingly productive and expressive your language is.

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

#373

Post by nsomaru »

modzu wrote: post #11
bshimmin wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One-line jokes are generally not well-received on HN unless they are so exceptionally amusing and original that they are beyond reproach. The standard rationale for this - which can make HN seem very dry and humourless at times - is that people want to avoid HN becoming like Reddit.

thanks for answering. but thanks to the parent comment i learned about a new (albiet widely recognized) author. thats useful because we all come to hn to learn things. i suspect most downvoters probably dont even understand the reference and just see a joke qua joke. boo.

"Boy", collection of short stories including "Henry Sugar"

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

#374

Post by manigandham »

rubber_duck wrote: post #369
ahansen wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe this is what Microsoft is trying to do with .NET Core. It's been successful so far, though they aren't at feature parity yet.

C# is very verbose and tedious compared to more expressive languages - having to deal with CLR types/API at runtime while using a language with very limited expressiveness (C#) is not very productive. It's better than Java if that's what you're aiming at - but JVM has an incredible ecosystem of stuff that works - much larger than .NET core which is not very mature in many areas (recently had to revert to .NET 4.7 bec…

Yes Typescript (also from Microsoft) is fascinating and fantastic at combining the strengths of static typing while still maintaining all the flexibility of dynamic types if necessary, however it's pretty much the only realistic non-academic of such a thing, so basically everything else is pales in comparison if that's what you're looking for.

Why is C# not expressive? It has the DLR and `dynamic` keyword which behaves just like JS typing if that's what you want, because it seems like your issue is really with static typing in general. Functional languages are nice but it seems C# with functional its slowly and carefully integrated functional extensions is actually more productive for most developers.

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

#375

Post by evilmushroom »

sidlls wrote: post #294
Swizec wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s because the average dev has less than 5 years of experience according to the StackOverlow survey, and web is the fastest growing field inside software engineering. A large majority of people you’re chiding for not learning from others, don’t even realize those other things exist.

Ignorance is curable, but requires the cooperation and desire of those who lack to achieve the cure. From my vantage the world of software development seems filled with mediocre individuals who all think of themselves as the Jon Galt of software.

Or people just enjoy building something that scratches an itch for them?

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

#376

Post by Sacho »

jecxjo wrote: post #268
Swizec wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s because the average dev has less than 5 years of experience according to the StackOverlow survey, and web is the fastest growing field inside software engineering. A large majority of people you’re chiding for not learning from others, don’t even realize those other things exist.

But it's not even independent green developers, it's everyone. Chai, mocha, jasmine, jest, should, expect, lab...omg do we really need another unit testing library? Sure they are all slightly different but there is no reason they all couldn't be condensed down to one or two libraries. Shall we list all the reactive UI frameworks? Or routing frameworks? Everyone is at fault here.

Half of those are assertions libraries, not unit testing libraries. What are you comparing this list to? What is the appropriate number of unit testing libraries a language should have? Do you scale that number for community size?

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

#377

Post by z3t4 »

For security I make Apparmor profiles for each script. I think the module system and NPM is what made Node.JS popular. And personally I like function passing style aka. callbacks, Promises and async/await looks more terse but is actually more complicated and prone to errors. I also don't like that TypeScript extend the JavaScript language and ads a compilation step to it, it's much better to add doctype like comments and you would get the best of both worlds, although I don't think type-checking is needed if you already do testing. For me static typing is mainly for performance, like in Dart, you can't simple make JavaScript more performant without it. With TypeScript you have "performance optimization" but without the performance benefit. If your code needs type annotations for others to understand what it does you need to use better names. The type annotations are for the compiler. Auto-complete and parameter hinting can be done via inference. And public parameters and methods should have documentation.

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

#378

Post by rwallace »

DenisM wrote: post #193
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's always like this. I'm lucky enough to have been around the industry for a while. I could probably count a dozen or more things that started out "Like X, only without all the BS!" --- only to end up with just as much BS or more than X ever had.

It's an anthropological effect, not a technological one. A new generation of craftsmen faces a choice between submitting to the rules of the old guard and making up their own rules. Reduced complexity is often a rallying cry, but I think the root of the phenomenon is in trying to find one's own social and professional standing in the situation where all the prominent positions are already taken and what little is lef…

This reminds me of when I first read about fractals: a collection of phenomena I've been staring at all my life, but never really saw until someone pointed out how to see them.

Currently popular music mostly sounds like noise to me, but that's not the point. What are the current generation of musicians supposed to do, be silent and spend their lives listening to the great bands of my youth? It's impossible to match Pink Floyd in the style of Pink Floyd. They need a new style.

Facebook is losing traffic to whatever is the latest trend in social media, not really because people are suddenly paranoid about privacy, but because each generation needs a network where the previous generation is not.

And for as long as humans write programs, there will be a need to invent new languages, not because the old languages were technically inadequate, but because each generation of programmers needs a way to escape the shadow of the previous generation, the way acorns need squirrels to carry them away from the shadow of oak trees.

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

#379

Post by dangerface »

chrisco255 wrote: post #325
jecxjo wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it's not even independent green developers, it's everyone. Chai, mocha, jasmine, jest, should, expect, lab...omg do we really need another unit testing library? Sure they are all slightly different but there is no reason they all couldn't be condensed down to one or two libraries. Shall we list all the reactive UI frameworks? Or routing frameworks? Everyone is at fault here.

Chai is not a testing framework, it's an assertion library compatible with all the other main testing frameworks you mentioned. Yes, we do need experimentation and innovation in testing frameworks. Jest was a real innovation to the space and is particularly awesome for React testing with it's snapshots feature. This kind of argument never gets made with anything else. "Why can't we all just stick to the Model T. It's…

The Model T is a product, but we are talking about tooling, in that context the same spanner that can fix the Model T can fix the latest Tesla.

The car industry probably wouldn't be as big, if you had to learn a new tool for every new car.

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

#380

Post by jcadam »

BigJono wrote: post #245
jrochkind1 wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is a story that gets repeated lots of times in our world of open source software dev. 1. X is SO bloated and poorly engineered full of bad legacy decisions. 2. We can totally do better let's invent a new thing, Y! 3. Wow, Y is so clean and fast and understandable. 4. But it doesn't do this thing a bunch of people reasonably really need... let's add it. (repeat 3 and 4 a few hundred times) 5. Y is so bloa…

Not everything that gets added is stuff that people reasonably need, either. If you cater to everyone's needs, then you'll end up with 10 solutions for the same problem, because every one of your users has their preferred one. I think Javascript suffers from this quite a bit. ES6 "classes" should never have made it in, for example. Not only did they add an extra level of abstraction for beginners to learn, but the on…

Yea, I don't use the 'class' keyword in ES6 at all (but then I keep to a fairly functional style in my JS). Modules and lambdas are the killer features in ES6 as far as I'm concerned.
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