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Why is a Java guy so excited about Node.js and JavaScript?

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Re: Why is a Java guy so excited about Node.js and JavaScript?

#41

Post by izacus »

realusername wrote: post #33
noicebrewery wrote: post #6

I don't really care what this guys credentials are; he claims npm and yarn are better than maven and gradle but doesn't bother explaining why (and it's evident he hasn't used gradle) Nor has he moved beyond a Java 6 mindset considering the things he complains about in terms of modularity, verbosity and even strict type checking. The fact that he thinks that the IDE race is between Eclipse and Netbeans is telling. As…

> reducer classes/files - possibly route classes/files - a "store" You don't need Redux for the majority of the apps. > Nor has he moved beyond a Java 6 mindset considering the things he complains about in terms of modularity, verbosity and even strict type checking. There's a reason people created Kotlin, there's clearly shortcomings in the Java language which did not move fast enough.

> There's a reason people created Kotlin, there's clearly shortcomings in the Java language which did not move fast enough.

Kotlin was created mainly because IntellJ couldn't move on from Java 6. It's a huge improvement, but you've just used the same type of mindset stuck at Java 6 that's being criticised.

Re: Why is a Java guy so excited about Node.js and JavaScript?

#42

Post by dagenix »

paulie_a wrote: post #39
dagenix wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't downvote you. However, I do disagree with what you are saying. In Python, the absolute most trivial case, is already a big pain. In order to get a project started, you need to: 1) create a virtual environment (which you can do with virtualenv, python -m venv, virtualenvwrapper, pyenv-virtualenv, Pipenv, poetry, or, Conda - but lets ignore Conda from here on out). 2) next, you may need to activate the virtual…

While I can understand your frustrations in some of those cases, but it almost seems like the issues are being overcomplicated. I have worked with complex code bases and three commands got me running. Occasionally requirements.txt might fail me, so yes I might have to install a package manually. But for most projects I am up and running in 2-3 minutes. I don't bother with pipenv, or poetry. I use the kiss method.

How do you create the requirements.txt file - by hand, or by pip freeze? If by hand, how do you make sure to lock the versions of your transitive dependencies? If by pip freeze, how do you keep track of what you actually depend on as opposed to what your dependencies depend on?

How do you update your dependencies? Do you modify requirements.txt directly? If so, how do you keep it in sync with setup.py? How do you find updated versions of your dependencies - do you search pypi by hand and then update the file? Or, do you leave the versions of your dependencies unlocked in requirements.txt and ask pip to re-install everything to pull in the updated ones? And if its the latter case, how do you then lock them down again so that if you do multiple deployments you'll always get the same set of dependencies installed?

I'm really not trying to say that there is anything wrong with the way you work - for some types of work, these aren't big issues. And, if these issues don't matter for your use case, well, that's awesome and keep on rocking it. However, for use cases where these issue do matter, the current Python dependency landscape is a bit of a dumpster fire - there are 50 ways to do everything and none of them work well. And worse, none of them really seem designed to solve the problem. And its not like its the UNIX philosophy at play, where tools are designed to solve one problem at a time and you can solve complex problems by composing them. I've spent a ton of time trying to make a reasonable workflow that handles the update and deploy lifecycle well, and no combination of tools seems to do it. (Except poetry - that tool, while not perfect, seems to actually be trying to fix this).

Re: Why is a Java guy so excited about Node.js and JavaScript?

#43

Post by suyash »

Seems like this guy has not touched Java for the last 10 years, this Java 10 is much more modern and there are many robust and light weight frameworks now that make web development (Java EE) a breeze. You can even write Node.JS code within Java using Graal VM.

Re: Why is a Java guy so excited about Node.js and JavaScript?

#45

Post by paulie_a »

dagenix wrote: post #42
paulie_a wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I can understand your frustrations in some of those cases, but it almost seems like the issues are being overcomplicated. I have worked with complex code bases and three commands got me running. Occasionally requirements.txt might fail me, so yes I might have to install a package manually. But for most projects I am up and running in 2-3 minutes. I don't bother with pipenv, or poetry. I use the kiss method.

How do you create the requirements.txt file - by hand, or by pip freeze? If by hand, how do you make sure to lock the versions of your transitive dependencies? If by pip freeze, how do you keep track of what you actually depend on as opposed to what your dependencies depend on? How do you update your dependencies? Do you modify requirements.txt directly? If so, how do you keep it in sync with setup.py? How do you fin…

Pip freeze is dead simple and I upgrade packages as needed. I've rarely manually updated requirements.txt. I literally make a venv, pip install what I need and I am off and running. My editor/ide automatically recognizes the environment. I can't imagine how much simpler it could be. I've been doing it for years without any problems. Dependcies, versioning etc are incredibly simple. A couple commands and I am up and running, boom, done. I probably don't even have time to get a cup of coffee in that workflow. I also can deploy to QA and production when necessary fairly fast, although that might take a few more minutes.

Having a proper requirements set of files for production is a 30 second trivial task and can be automated easily.

Re: Why is a Java guy so excited about Node.js and JavaScript?

#46

Post by mythrwy »

dagenix wrote: post #42
paulie_a wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I can understand your frustrations in some of those cases, but it almost seems like the issues are being overcomplicated. I have worked with complex code bases and three commands got me running. Occasionally requirements.txt might fail me, so yes I might have to install a package manually. But for most projects I am up and running in 2-3 minutes. I don't bother with pipenv, or poetry. I use the kiss method.

How do you create the requirements.txt file - by hand, or by pip freeze? If by hand, how do you make sure to lock the versions of your transitive dependencies? If by pip freeze, how do you keep track of what you actually depend on as opposed to what your dependencies depend on? How do you update your dependencies? Do you modify requirements.txt directly? If so, how do you keep it in sync with setup.py? How do you fin…

Wow that's a lot of problems I've never had.

Why would I care if a requirement is direct or a dependency? If it's a dependency it's a requirement. Period.

Speaking of dependencies, NPM generally has a lot more and they are deeper and all too often for little shit that never should have been an import in the first place IMO. More parts == more stuff to go wrong and all too often it seems to.

Pip isn't perfect and granted I use it more than NPM. And once in a blue moon I do run into troubles and wind up installing a package manually or editing requirements.txt by hand. But it mostly works. NPM on the other hand seems to blow up quite often. At least for me. Versioning, this is different than it was a week ago, oh, this dependency only works on Macs, etc. etc. Plus it just feels about as trustworthy as gas station sushi. Only my opinion and experience, but I've spent a lot more time fighting with NPM than pip.

Re: Why is a Java guy so excited about Node.js and JavaScript?

#47

Post by galaxyLogic »

Obviously Java's type-checking compiler is a benefit for large projects. How could JavaScript ever address its lack of that? Well JavaScript is a dynamic language, it can check types at runtime. Combined with unit-testing that can go a long way without requiring that "everything must always be type-checked". For instance it makes sense to declare the types of public interfaces of a class, maybe not so much every variable used in their implementation.

Cisf.js is one attempt at providing simple run-time assertions to serve the purpose of (optional) dynamic type-checking.

https://www.npmjs.com/package/cisf

Re: Why is a Java guy so excited about Node.js and JavaScript?

#48

Post by RandyRanderson »

bodas wrote: post #40
sonnyblarney wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wha? I don't think so. An npm-like framework could work for Java. The difference between classloading and node.js 'require' module loader is not super relevant. Frankly - the reason that Maven and Gradle are more sophisticated is because many Java projects are massive compared to most JS projects, the amount of complexity, various kinds of packaging, testing etc. necessitates some inherent complexity in modules. Java…

npm works because you can have lodash v3 and lodash v4 existing at the same time, at runtime. Node sees two pieces of code at different locations on disk, and loads them twice, considering them to have no relationship. This means that a library can turn its API completely inside out and not cause dependency hell. Your dependencies can update their sub-dependencies in their own time. This means there's no pressures ag…

> "you can have ... v3 and ... v4 existing at the same time, at runtime"

That's exactly what Java ClassLoaders do...

Re: Why is a Java guy so excited about Node.js and JavaScript?

#49

Post by foepys »

izacus wrote: post #41
realusername wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> reducer classes/files - possibly route classes/files - a "store" You don't need Redux for the majority of the apps. > Nor has he moved beyond a Java 6 mindset considering the things he complains about in terms of modularity, verbosity and even strict type checking. There's a reason people created Kotlin, there's clearly shortcomings in the Java language which did not move fast enough.

> There's a reason people created Kotlin, there's clearly shortcomings in the Java language which did not move fast enough. Kotlin was created mainly because IntellJ couldn't move on from Java 6. It's a huge improvement, but you've just used the same type of mindset stuck at Java 6 that's being criticised.

Wasn't Kotlin introduced because Android was still stuck in Java 6? IntelliJ is running on JRE9 (a more or less LTE version they package with their installer) currently, afaik, while Android supports Java 7 and only some Java 8 features.

Re: Why is a Java guy so excited about Node.js and JavaScript?

#50

Post by galaxyLogic »

zmmmmm wrote: post #9

This person definitely needs to try out some JVM languages like Scala, Kotlin or Groovy. They solve nearly everything he talks about while keeping the good parts of the JVM ecosystem and avoiding a lot of the bad parts of NodeJS.

For a long time I worked with Java and tried to make the move to Groovy since I could appreciate what I read about it, having a background in Smalltalk. But somehow using Java for some large projects just seemed more straightforward and safe, because of type-checking which supports large-scale refactorings.

But since I moved to mainly work on Node.js I feel that Node.js is what Groovy should have been. A simple but actually powerful language since EcmaScript version 6.

And open.JavaScript feels open because, JavaScript is everywhere, both on the client and now with Node.js on the server too. Everybody knows it. It can not be called "niche language", like Groovy perhaps could. There is safety in numbers.

What I'm looking forward to is Node.js running on GraalVM. That should make it easy to call Java libraries from within Node.js. Use JavaScript as "glue for Java" like it was originally intended.

https://www.graalvm.org/docs/reference-manual/languages/js/

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