Node.js vs jRuby vs Java (Nobody cares about your technology) ... • Hacker News Board

Re: Node.js vs jRuby vs Java (Nobody cares about your technology) ...

#11

Post by Andi » Tue, Sep 06, 2011, 1:29 PM UTC

He should conclude with even more positive statements about developing and discussing good ideas in the context of use, not technology. I miss good discussions about ideas and more abstract concepts that go beyond technical terms and programming languages. Instead everybody is disrupting with his latest YA* that we had a thousand times.

*) KV stores, node.js hating or petting, the next big X, iPhools, Fezbook, little boyz anonymous - we are the rulerz of the world - hacking, "old tool" in a "new language" thing

(OK, I am enerved ...)

Re: Node.js vs jRuby vs Java (Nobody cares about your technology) ...

#12

Post by mhd » Tue, Sep 06, 2011, 1:38 PM UTC

EwanToo wrote: post #2

The key piece for me is: "If you could choose n where your language is n times as slow and you are n times as productive with this language were both true which value of n would you choose?" It's absolutely true - For me, if I can build an app 5 times quicker than before, and the amount of time involved isn't trivial (i.e. a few hours) then then development time is vastly more important than the end speed of the code…

The problem I see with this premise is that for any reasonable language/environment and actual, real-life problem, n will hardly ever be n.

Most of the time, your productivity increase p will be equal to a slowdown s multiplied by a factor f.

So the big performance for lots of problems is: How large can f get for you? Sometimes you can't really pay the price (e.g. writing 3D engines in tcl), sometimes the money factor m will make more than up for it (i.e. more programmers, more instances on more servers etc.).

Never mind the actual size of p. Given the mentioned hodgepodge of dynamic languages, I'd expect it to be pretty small unless your environment isn't up to it, i.e. you have to write modules. Then even hyper-mega-insta-lisptalkscript will be much slower than CPAN.

I'd say that even for C/C++ vs. dynlang f will be pretty high, but again, it often doesn't matter that much…

Re: Node.js vs jRuby vs Java (Nobody cares about your technology) ...

#13

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Sep 06, 2011, 1:43 PM UTC

voodootikigod wrote: post #7

nddrylliog wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole thing came from "someone responding to node.js fanboys who pretend Node.js is faster at everything". Turns out his response contained a small, but ultimately flawed benchmark, which in turn provoked the reaction of other Node.js people. Some of it happened on Google+ and various blogs. However, your perspective as a console game developer is highly interesting to me - care to write a bit more about it?

Not quite sure I would call people who question trivial benchmarks "fanboys". I would call people who post trivial one-sided benchmarks the fanboys, regardless of the language promoted. IMHO.

[deleted]

Re: Node.js vs jRuby vs Java (Nobody cares about your technology) ...

#14

Post by voodootikigod » Tue, Sep 06, 2011, 1:55 PM UTC

[deleted] wrote: post #13

voodootikigod wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not quite sure I would call people who question trivial benchmarks "fanboys". I would call people who post trivial one-sided benchmarks the fanboys, regardless of the language promoted. IMHO.

[deleted]

Constructive blog articles rarely are tagged "rant" by the author. If your point is "stop all the madness, build things" just say that or echo people that already have. Wrapping it in anger, as it is currently written, you have created fodder for nonconstructive discussion.

Re: Node.js vs jRuby vs Java (Nobody cares about your technology) ...

#15

Post by EwanToo » Tue, Sep 06, 2011, 2:23 PM UTC

adgar wrote: post #9

EwanToo wrote: post #2

The key piece for me is: "If you could choose n where your language is n times as slow and you are n times as productive with this language were both true which value of n would you choose?" It's absolutely true - For me, if I can build an app 5 times quicker than before, and the amount of time involved isn't trivial (i.e. a few hours) then then development time is vastly more important than the end speed of the code…

This is pretty good advice in an entrepreneurial forum where people are most interested in quickly prototyping an idea for the web, showing it to people and finding where to take it and how to change the idea, getting people to look at it who might throw some cash at it, and so on. You're not concerned about high performance or even really quality engineering yet, all the "soft" stuff is way more important. I'd quest…

For engineering-heavy work (I work in telecoms where a fair bit of work goes into reliability), the choice of language is still pretty low in the importance compared to other decisions.

The language can make things easier (and quicker) to do things the right way, but it'll always be possible to do the wrong thing.