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Node.js isn't a silver bullet, but it's still a bullet.

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Re: Node.js isn't a silver bullet, but it's still a bullet.

#101

Post by guan »

GnarlinBrando wrote: post #67
jerf wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you do not already think it has been hyped, I am at a loss as to how to prove it to you. Let me put it this way: Why do we hear so much about Node when it's just another event-based single-threaded "asynchronous" execution environment running on a dynamic language, like half-a-dozen others that preceded it? Basically, it won the hype lottery. Whatever nice things you may have to say about it apply reasonably well…

Because it is inherently attractive to people who have worked client side in javascript and want to expand. Like me. I'm relatively new to the industry. I know javascript fairly well and while I might not be as familiar with the sort of problems that have to be solved on the server I am learning. I think a lot of the criticism about people getting into it thinking that they can just port their client side experience…

I did not have much experience with frontend code and more or less had to learn JavaScript to use Node. I think one reason Node has become so popular is that it is relatively simple to understand (in part because JavaScript is), the documentation is excellent, and it works well. Twisted has similar goals, but it was harder for me to learn what was going on, even though I have prior Python experience.

Re: Node.js isn't a silver bullet, but it's still a bullet.

#102

Post by rehack »

jeremymcanally wrote: post #7
huggyface wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What hype? Whose hype? I think it's a strawman. There is a certain class of problem that often appears on the web presentation layer -- the interaction between the browser and a cornucopia of back-end sources and systems -- where nodejs is often a very good fit, and it is almost always what enthusiasts of the platform are speaking of. That's it. Nothing more. I've seen various angry retorts that opine that become it…

If you've spent any appreciable amount of time on Hacker News, you'd know that there has been pretty big hype behind Node.js. If you don't see it, you're not paying attention. Anecdotally, I work with a lot of fairly inexperienced developers with my clients, and I honestly can't tell you how many times they've suggested we "rewrite (x) in Node.js because it's faster" or "let's switch this to Redis" with no real reaso…

I endorse your view. Its puzzling to see how in a very silly manner, so many people just want to be "fashionable" when it comes to use of tech.

The FB engineer in his interview (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3527419) says it just about right that "Technology is a great servant but a terrible master"!

Re: Node.js isn't a silver bullet, but it's still a bullet.

#103

Post by rehack »

jerf wrote: post #4

The problem was the hype. It was hyped as a silver bullet, and we even have issues like people who have drunk too much Node Kool-Aid thinking that Node has the absolute best multithreading solution, and anything else that doesn't work exactly like Node is therefore worse, when Node in fact merely has a polished-but-old-school approach to the problem. If people are upset that Node isn't a silver bullet, it's because t…

IMO, this humorous comment on HN sums it up best.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3292806

Re: Node.js isn't a silver bullet, but it's still a bullet.

#104

Post by randomdata »

democracy wrote: post #97
randomdata wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You cannot build hype out of nothing. The reason Node saw the hype it did was because it attacked and reasonably solved real problems that people were having. What you seem to be pointing out here is that there are still unsolved problems out there. Problems where Node tried and failed to deliver. We used to write web applications completely in C, and that was shown to not work either. It doesn't mean those people we…

"You cannot build hype out of nothing. " Yes you can. There was no hype around asyn java libs (netty , grizzly, mina), however the chance of java folks having these problems is way higher than for javascript front end devs (the main audience of node).

Perhaps I did not clearly explain myself. It is no secret that you can write a async server in just about any language. Node's creator spent considerable time doing just that in C and Ruby before starting on Node, in fact.

However, creating a working solution does not free you of problems. Being bound to an obtuse language or API, for instance, is still a problem. One that will continue to haunt you for as long as the application lives.

Java Struts was, once upon a time, the framework of choice for web development. While it solved some problems, it created a whole new set of its own. A little known character, DHH, laughed at it and set out to build something better. While Java can produce a web application as well as any other, Rails became a big hype machine because it solved problems people had on the implementation side.

I recall EventMachine had a little bit of hype before Node came along, but it didn't solve the problem very well. Few supporting libraries supported asynchronous operation and the language just didn't feel right. I imagine your Java libraries suffer the same problem, and that is why they never saw much hype either.

Javascript, on the other hand, was designed to be asynchronous from the beginning. It had the perfect expressiveness for the job, and the libraries were all built to work in the environment. That is what made Node interesting, and why the hype followed. It solved peoples problems.

Re: Node.js isn't a silver bullet, but it's still a bullet.

#105

Post by GnarlinBrando »

guan wrote: post #101
GnarlinBrando wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it is inherently attractive to people who have worked client side in javascript and want to expand. Like me. I'm relatively new to the industry. I know javascript fairly well and while I might not be as familiar with the sort of problems that have to be solved on the server I am learning. I think a lot of the criticism about people getting into it thinking that they can just port their client side experience…

I did not have much experience with frontend code and more or less had to learn JavaScript to use Node. I think one reason Node has become so popular is that it is relatively simple to understand (in part because JavaScript is), the documentation is excellent, and it works well. Twisted has similar goals, but it was harder for me to learn what was going on, even though I have prior Python experience.

I would definitely agree with you there. The documentation, as well as the number of tutorials and ebooks, is one of the big reasons for the so called 'hype.' I tried looking at twisted, I know enough python to be able to throw together some simple scripts and work with tools written in it I'm no pro though, and felt totally lost.

Re: Node.js isn't a silver bullet, but it's still a bullet.

#106

Post by GnarlinBrando »

tensor wrote: post #93
GnarlinBrando wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is sort of like saying a smart phone is not new technology. In a sense it is not. It is the combination of two already existing technologies, but isn't that pretty much what all new technologies are? On top of that it is a new language and each language is going to be better or worse at doing certain tasks. It is also frequently more beneficial to actually learn something for yourself. As for your second point,…

No, there are sometimes genuinely new technologies: ideas or frameworks that have not been previously explored. Google's PageRank algorithm is a good example. It's not often that you see genuinely new ideas in programming languages, although it does happen occasionally. Javascript as a language doesn't push any boundaries, although it's an alright language overall. I don't know what books would be best to learn event…

Most technologies are made up components of older technologies or ideas, I am not saying that you cannot do something genuinely new. But I am also sure that if you talk to the guys who built pagerank they probably had some inspirations and stuff they took ideas from. It is all perspective.

I agree its the concepts that matter, it is just that whenever I hear this argument no one (who is making it) can actually point out exactly what those concepts are or even point to any reason why another event driven framework would be better (besides the obvious I already know the language gambit which applies to node equally, if not more). Many people cant even point out the obvious frameworks that do similar stuff, with maybe twisted being the exception.

I would be incredibly surprised if even a handful of dev shops have server side devs who only work in node. But I don't really see what that has to do with anything.

I get that this is mostly about the 'hype,' but if Node and the community are doing well, have good documentation and we are seeing the technology used to implement some cool stuff (trello for example) then how is the hype confusing? That is the thing that I don't get. Node is now a cross-platform environment that fits easily into PaaS and SaaS concepts, is gaining hosting options by the day (heroku, azure, etc) has a huge library of third party modules, and the majority of people using it seem to understand what it is and is not. It seems obvious to me that any new technology, or new implementation of a technology if that makes you feel better about the terminology, that has all those things going for will generate a certain amount of hype.

Re: Node.js isn't a silver bullet, but it's still a bullet.

#107

Post by oleg008 »

maratd wrote: post #12

The problem with Node.js is that it's very good at it's original purpose and terrible at everything else. Node.js is excellent for building network services. It is terrible at general server-side computing. If you need a server that consumes websocket connections, it's great. If you need to build a CLI script that installs and upgrades various software packages, not so much. If you need a chat server, it's great. If…

bullshit

Re: Node.js isn't a silver bullet, but it's still a bullet.

#108

Post by grannyg00se »

0x0 wrote: post #63
grannyg00se wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"When one digs down, we eventually arrive at "I read a blog post that said it was real fast and stuff."" That doesn't show that there was too much hype. That just shows there is enough popularity for an inexperienced developer to find it on their radar. If it was overly hyped, you'd find a lot of experienced developers blogging about how they were horribly mislead and that node doesn't do what it advertises.

And then you get blogposts like this: http://teddziuba.com/2011/10/node-js-is-cancer.html

Which amounts to "I don't like javascript, I don't like things that don't work the way I like to work, and I love strawmen."

Re: Node.js isn't a silver bullet, but it's still a bullet.

#109

Post by sausagefeet »

randomdata wrote: post #104
democracy wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"You cannot build hype out of nothing. " Yes you can. There was no hype around asyn java libs (netty , grizzly, mina), however the chance of java folks having these problems is way higher than for javascript front end devs (the main audience of node).

Perhaps I did not clearly explain myself. It is no secret that you can write a async server in just about any language. Node's creator spent considerable time doing just that in C and Ruby before starting on Node, in fact. However, creating a working solution does not free you of problems. Being bound to an obtuse language or API, for instance, is still a problem. One that will continue to haunt you for as long as th…

> Javascript, on the other hand, was designed to be asynchronous from the beginning. It had the perfect expressiveness for the job, and the libraries were all built to work in the environment. That is what made Node interesting, and why the hype followed. It solved peoples problems.

This is a bit of an overstatement, as we've seen since node became popular JS really doesn't have the appropriate amount of expressiveness. There are so many libraries that try to remove callback-hell from JS code (Step, node-fibers) but they all have their little issues and quirks because you just can't solve the problem well in JS. Now TameJS and IcedCoffeeScript are trying to attack the problem by implementing the solutions outside JS and compiling to it.

Re: Node.js isn't a silver bullet, but it's still a bullet.

#110

Post by sausagefeet »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #78
jeremymcanally wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you've spent any appreciable amount of time on Hacker News, you'd know that there has been pretty big hype behind Node.js. If you don't see it, you're not paying attention. Anecdotally, I work with a lot of fairly inexperienced developers with my clients, and I honestly can't tell you how many times they've suggested we "rewrite (x) in Node.js because it's faster" or "let's switch this to Redis" with no real reaso…

A lot of buzz about Node shouldn't be confused with a lot of "hype". If people are talking about something a lot and using it for very specific projects that's very different from people evangelizing it as a silver bullet solution for everything.

A lot of buzz can qualify has "hype" in my opinion. Node has gotten a lot of attention over the past year, just like Erlang got a few years before and Haskell in there too. The only difference people actually started using Node.
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