Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Node.js is good for solving problems I don’t have

xquerywebappdev.wordpress.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 61 posts

Re: Node.js is good for solving problems I don’t have

#31

Post by inopinatus »

geuis wrote: post #5

Exactly, node is useful for solving problems that you don't have. So you wouldn't use node for them, then. The answer to your own question is your own statement. Node makes it possible to do completely new things that would be difficult to do otherwise. I take exception to this statement: "Node enthusiasts are front-end coders not wanting to do server coding." The number of engineers who only do server-side programmi…

Parallel requests and async callbacks have been hallmarks of server programming for decades. You'd have to be pretty young to think this is novel. Good protocol library designers have always exposed some mechanism for kernel-assisted polling (such as the file descriptor for the TCP socket of an LDAP connection).

So, Node solves problems we've already solved, only now using the second most poorly designed common production language available today (first place is reserved for PHP).

Re: Node.js is good for solving problems I don’t have

#32

Post by maratd »

zzzeek wrote: post #26
geuis wrote: post #5

Exactly, node is useful for solving problems that you don't have. So you wouldn't use node for them, then. The answer to your own question is your own statement. Node makes it possible to do completely new things that would be difficult to do otherwise. I take exception to this statement: "Node enthusiasts are front-end coders not wanting to do server coding." The number of engineers who only do server-side programmi…

"Node has been a blessing for me, as a frontend engineer, because I can finally code servers in the same mindset as I write client-side javascript. " That was precisely the author's point. You'd rather stick with what you know then bother to deal with traditional server side techniques.

Uhmm, I've been writing server side code for the last decade. I've also been writing front facing code for just as long.

JavaScript works well for Node because it is a language that has evolved to be asynchronous. Not because some front-end web monkey n00bz know JavaScript. Although that is certainly a plus.

Node.JS shines when you need to write network applications. It was advertised for this purpose by its creator. That is its stated goal.

Traditional server-side solutions SUCK at this. Try writing a non-blocking server-side WebSocket server in PHP and distribute the load across all of the cores. Yeah. Exactly.

Don't get me wrong, I love PHP. But for every job, a proper tool.

Node.JS takes care of the network server and hands off the work to PHP via FastCGI. That's how it should be. Node.JS solves real problems right now. If it isn't doing that, you're trying to hammer in a nail with a screwdriver. Stop it.

Re: Node.js is good for solving problems I don’t have

#33

Post by sofuture »

geuis wrote: post #30
zzzeek wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Node has been a blessing for me, as a frontend engineer, because I can finally code servers in the same mindset as I write client-side javascript. " That was precisely the author's point. You'd rather stick with what you know then bother to deal with traditional server side techniques.

I already do that. If I need to write a more traditional kind of page, I use Django and Python. Easy to setup, excellent framework and language to work with. I use node for new cutting edge things which Django and Python can handle, but not as easily as node.

I use node for new cutting edge things which Django and Python can handle, but not as easily as node.

Like what?

Re: Node.js is good for solving problems I don’t have

#35

Post by ricardobeat »

sofuture wrote: post #33
geuis wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I already do that. If I need to write a more traditional kind of page, I use Django and Python. Easy to setup, excellent framework and language to work with. I use node for new cutting edge things which Django and Python can handle, but not as easily as node.

I use node for new cutting edge things which Django and Python can handle, but not as easily as node. Like what?

Like massive concurrency? Websockets?

Re: Node.js is good for solving problems I don’t have

#36

Post by lucian1900 »

geuis wrote: post #30
zzzeek wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Node has been a blessing for me, as a frontend engineer, because I can finally code servers in the same mindset as I write client-side javascript. " That was precisely the author's point. You'd rather stick with what you know then bother to deal with traditional server side techniques.

I already do that. If I need to write a more traditional kind of page, I use Django and Python. Easy to setup, excellent framework and language to work with. I use node for new cutting edge things which Django and Python can handle, but not as easily as node.

Why not just use Twisted? It's a lot more mature and complete than node, and you don't have to deal with JavaScript either.

Re: Node.js is good for solving problems I don’t have

#37

Post by ricardobeat »

inopinatus wrote: post #31
geuis wrote: post #5

Exactly, node is useful for solving problems that you don't have. So you wouldn't use node for them, then. The answer to your own question is your own statement. Node makes it possible to do completely new things that would be difficult to do otherwise. I take exception to this statement: "Node enthusiasts are front-end coders not wanting to do server coding." The number of engineers who only do server-side programmi…

Parallel requests and async callbacks have been hallmarks of server programming for decades. You'd have to be pretty young to think this is novel. Good protocol library designers have always exposed some mechanism for kernel-assisted polling (such as the file descriptor for the TCP socket of an LDAP connection). So, Node solves problems we've already solved, only now using the second most poorly designed common produ…

Right, that's why most servers nowadays are written in this mystery platform that you failed to mention.

Re: Node.js is good for solving problems I don’t have

#38

Post by MostAwesomeDude »

htilford wrote: post #20
MostAwesomeDude wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have solved a problem that didn't exist -- XML and HTML were both reasonable linguafrancas prior to JSON's invention. JavaScript as a server-side langauge is not a good thing; JavaScript is not a good systems language. We've already had an era of a poor systems language (PHP) being predominant in the web application space, and the conclusion was that there are better languages which can more effectively represent…

What part of JSON isn't a subset of JavaScript? "JSON is a subset of the object literal notation of JavaScript. Since JSON is a subset of JavaScript, it can be used in the language with no muss or fuss." http://www.json.org/js.html

http://timelessrepo.com/json-isnt-a-javascript-subset

Also see my other reply.

Re: Node.js is good for solving problems I don’t have

#39

Post by ricardobeat »

smtf wrote: post #27
nakkiel wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding Javascript, I think it suits well the async paradigm because that's how people expect Javascript to be. Why isn't Javascript a good server-side language?

I agree that js does support the async paradigm for the reason you mentioned; however, at the risk of sounding like I'm speaking for the op js would not be my first choice for system or server side programming. The simple reason being that javascript's behavior is often near inexplicable, many examples can be found here: http://wtfjs.com . I'm tolerant of that strangeness while manipulating the DOM but really only be…

Every language has it's own WTFs. Many of the ones in Javascript are shared with Ruby, Python and other interpreted languages. They hardly bite anyone in a real project.

Re: Node.js is good for solving problems I don’t have

#40

Post by MostAwesomeDude »

ender7 wrote: post #23
MostAwesomeDude wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have solved a problem that didn't exist -- XML and HTML were both reasonable linguafrancas prior to JSON's invention. JavaScript as a server-side langauge is not a good thing; JavaScript is not a good systems language. We've already had an era of a poor systems language (PHP) being predominant in the web application space, and the conclusion was that there are better languages which can more effectively represent…

- XML and HTML are good ways to structure data...sometimes. Other times, they're godawful. Especially if you're trying to pass data from one piece of code to another piece of code in order to do RPC-like things (server->client, for example). There's a reason that JSON is popular, and it's not because "it's the cool thing to do". - JSON is a strict subset of Javascript syntax. You can always eval() a JSON string to co…

http://timelessrepo.com/json-isnt-a-javascript-subset

JSON isn't a strict subset of JS. Moreover, no, you should never eval() things which are untrusted. Do you really trust everything the browser tells you? No? Then why trust JSON?

I'm not anti-JSON, I'm anti-JS. Browsers don't support other languages (except for VB, which bites, and Fx nightly support for Python, which I wish would become more widespread) so there's no choice in a browser. On the server side, though, you have a chance to use real languages, so you really should.

Oh, and also, you do know that XML-RPC, bless its ill-specified heart, is still around, right? There's a whole world of enterprise that isn't prepared to accept JSON-RPC.

Post reply on HN