Deno looks very promising
Things I Regret About Node.js [video]
391–400 of 502 posts
Re: Things I Regret About Node.js [video]
#392Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 behav…
Dynamic doesn't behave the same as JS typing, you're still using CLR object model and typing rules, you're just losing compile time checks - it gets complicated really fast if you want to do meta programming even with DLR and it's not really ergonomic in C# (like casting/boxing primitive types, etc.)
Think about AutoMapper and then compare it to a TS solution using spread operator. How much boilerplate automapper crap do you see in your typical enterprise C# project ?
And that's not even touching on functional features, like you can't even have top level functions in C#, it's "one class per file dogma" + multiple wasted boilperplate lines and scrolling. I recently rewrote a C# program to F# - didn't even modify much in terms of semantics (OK having discriminated unions and pattern matching was a huge win in one case), just by using higher level operators and grouping stuff - line count went down to 1/3 and was grouped in to logical modules. I could read one module as a unit and understand it in it's context instead of having to browse 20 definition files with random 5 line type definitions. I could achieve similar improvements by rewriting to TS or Python.
C# adds overhead all over the place, people are just so used to it they don't even see it as useless overhead but as inherent problems they need solve - like how many of the popular enterprise patterns are workarounds around language limitations ?
When I bring this up people just assume I'm lazy about writing code - but I don't really care about writing the code out - tools mostly generate the boilerplate anyway. Having to read trough that noise is such productivity drain because instead of focusing on the issue at hand I'm focusing on filtering out the bloat from the codebase.
Re: Things I Regret About Node.js [video]
#393One takeaway from this is how Microsoft is killing it currently: * Much-beloved TypeScript * Much-beloved VSCode * Much-beloved GitHub If they hire Ryan to flesh out his vision for deno we'd probably need a new acronym, MAFANG On a more serious note, I wonder if deno could support a lower level construct like Observables. As much as Promises are perceived to be an improvement over callbacks, they still have major fla…
TypeScript has async/await built-in, and Deno has top-level await too. Promises won't be necessary most of the time.
Re: Things I Regret About Node.js [video]
#394Having worked with Maven, Gradle, Ruby Gems, Pip and the non-existing Go package management I must say I actually really like the Node / NPM combo. I guess artists are their own worst critics. edit: forgot Scala's SBT, admittedly a builder using Maven repo's but still an excellent example of how bad UX in this area can get.
npm is the worst software I use daily.
* The maintainers have pushed several breaking updates by mistake (I'm a teapot recently).
* There have been a few cascading failures due to the ecosystem (leftpad).
* node-gyp (alluded to in the talk) break cryptically on install in different operating system/package combinations. It also obscures the actual package contents.
* The lack of package signatures and things like namespace squatting significantly hurt the overall security of npm.
And let's not forget how terrible things were pre-yarn with the nested folder structure of node_modules and no lock file.
Compare that to NuGet where I've literally never had any of these problems.
Re: Things I Regret About Node.js [video]
#395I've said it before and I say it again; NodeJS is an infrastructure component, not a general purpose application runtime environment. I totally recognise the IO problem in our connected world and NodeJS really does solve the problem around the "many simultaneously persistent connections", something that would be really hard to do without something like NodeJS. In essence (and in my humble opinion) NodeJS is basically…
I'd say your intel is far out of date. Async-everything + async/await makes Node more elegant than the same programs in Ruby/Python. Even little things like "make these two database requests in parallel and wait on them both" or "process these urls but only have 8 requests in flight at a time."
> "process these urls but only have 8 requests in flight at a time."
What's the state of the art solution to this in node.js?
Re: Things I Regret About Node.js [video]
#396Can 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.
I'm on the Dart team (but I don't speak for the entire team here). Dart had two initial goals: 1. Get a native Dart VM into Chrome and eventually other browsers. 2. Get a significant number of client-side web developers that were using JavaScript to move to Dart. It's probably not obvious, but these goals are in tension with each other. In order to motivate adding a giant new VM to a browser, you need to make the lan…
> The Dart leads prioritized (1) over (2). The idea was that the VM would be so great users would flock to it giving us (2).
This is actually why I, as a developer, decided not to use Dart: because it would give Chrome a competitive advantage and more control over the other browsers. Chrome has enough advantages as it is, and I like having competition in the browser market.
Re: Things I Regret About Node.js [video]
#397Earlier quoted context omitted.
> but the only reason for doing so was "my code doesn't look like it does in other languages"... As much as I beat the FP drum these days at work, I find the class syntax a much nicer way of organizing solutions to certain, pardon the pun, classes of problems. Whether or not you find this to be semantic diabetes is a matter of taste, I suppose. I'm curious what, specifically, you find to be the major issue that makes…
ES6 classes were such a relief compared to the prototype bloat you had to right. I love syntactic sugar that makes my life easier. ES6+ flavors of JS & Typescript really made me take web programming seriously again.
also agree, would not go back. TypeScript is savage
Re: Things I Regret About Node.js [video]
#398Earlier quoted context omitted.
Having the same language allows to share some code between frontend and backend. This can be used to prerender your SPA on the server, for example, or to share some logic with the client to enable offline usage.
Being able to share code is really not that great because you don't share that much code between front and back in reality. Being able to share the paradigms , structure , mindset and tooling (like linters, formatters, code generators, packagers, whatever..) is what's awesome. You remove a whole lot of context switches and cognitive dissonance, smoothing the train of thought which greatly eases the expression of idea…
It depends. I was working on a websockets based game using node.js on the backend and React, redux & canvas on the front end. As my game grew, more and more code went into the /shared/ folder. It's extremely useful to be able to mirror the game logic that's run on the server for security in the front end for convenience and performance (avoid waiting for round trips for everything).
For example, I had a standard RPG style combat system. Being able to share all of the code that does calculations for combat allows you to put those calculations into the UI as much as you want.
I think standard CRUD web apps are different because there's much more asymmetry in the responsibilities of the back end and front end.
Re: Things I Regret About Node.js [video]
#399Having worked with Maven, Gradle, Ruby Gems, Pip and the non-existing Go package management I must say I actually really like the Node / NPM combo. I guess artists are their own worst critics. edit: forgot Scala's SBT, admittedly a builder using Maven repo's but still an excellent example of how bad UX in this area can get.
npm is the worst software I use daily. * The maintainers have pushed several breaking updates by mistake (I'm a teapot recently). * There have been a few cascading failures due to the ecosystem (leftpad). * node-gyp (alluded to in the talk) break cryptically on install in different operating system/package combinations. It also obscures the actual package contents. * The lack of package signatures and things like nam…
I can't argue with you, but "most of the time" it works. Not that I have a choice (unless I stop being a frontend developer), but the time we spend with node/npm debugging is not critical in the timesheet/log.
Re: Things I Regret About Node.js [video]
#400Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 P…
Love the analogy with the squirrels