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Node.js - Convincing the boss guide

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Re: Node.js - Convincing the boss guide

#71
post #6

The usecase of building JSON api servers are often used. Can someone give some examples of node JSON api implementations?

I recently built SAJAK (Simple Authenticated JSON API Kit) to suit my own needs: https://github.com/jed/sajak

Good name.

Re: Node.js - Convincing the boss guide

#73
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We did some bake-offs with node and Go (and other languages of course). Go won pretty much across the board, except in the time to write category. The other big downside to Node is hiring. You have two types of "JavaScript" developers. People good with JQuery, and people who have written JavaScript books. There is extremely little middle ground from which to hire good to awesome developers. Go is the C replacement. N…

Interesting. My own limited experience with Go suggests that it requires more time to write but less time to test and debug and tune so it might b a wash overall. Where did you find you were spending most of your time?

What I meant was that Node is super fast for cranking out proof-of-concept stuff, and that was its big win. When it got down to trying to close the performance gap between Node and Go (an order of magnitude requests/sec) we sunk a lot more time into Node unfortunately.

Re: Node.js - Convincing the boss guide

#74
post #43
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prove it: What is node equivalent of: "rails g resource User email:string password:string"? AFAIK there is none. At least not one that would take care of migrations, validation, security, logic and views. And if I want to use postgres? Sure, there's a npm package. But it's for queries, I still need to define models and validation manually. ....

http://railwayjs.com/ http://towerjs.org/

Doing what anybody else would do after looking at those two projects, I googled "railwaysjs vs towerjs" and found the question on Stack Overflow with an incredible comparison made by the creator of towerjs:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9897017/railwayjs-vs-towe...

Re: Node.js - Convincing the boss guide

#75
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. My own limited experience with Go suggests that it requires more time to write but less time to test and debug and tune so it might b a wash overall. Where did you find you were spending most of your time?

What I meant was that Node is super fast for cranking out proof-of-concept stuff, and that was its big win. When it got down to trying to close the performance gap between Node and Go (an order of magnitude requests/sec) we sunk a lot more time into Node unfortunately.

That jibes with my intuitions after looking briefly at both of them. Node seems like it would be quick for quickly banging out prototypes but I can imagine that all the other metrics might tilt pretty quickly towards Go.

I've recently rediscovered the joys of static typing so that alone inclines me much more toward go.

Re: Node.js - Convincing the boss guide

#76
post #12

Here's something oft-understated: As a web developer, you sit on the intersection of engineering, design and art. You're lucky enough to live at a time where there are numerous production-ready tools with which to do your job. If you choose a tool that you're excited to explore, with an active and fast-moving ecosystem, your excitement and enthusiasm will make you happier and more likely to do a better job. Someone d…

"Excitement and enthusiasm for something new " was left off that list for a very good reason: it's a terrible reason to pick a technology like node (or anything else). In fact, I'd go so far as to say that enthusiasm for mere new-ness is one of the more pernicious, counter-productive parts of modern hacker culture. Rich Hickey implied this at his RailsConf keynote when he talked about how great we are at judging bene…

Here's a man who's certainly not afraid of newness itself (I mean, he single-handedly released a new JVM hosted LISP)

Though, I note that at the time, those were two mature and and well pedigreed technologies.

I assert that anyone who trumpets the inherent value of "new" hasn't been around long enough to understand that there is a never-ending stream of new things and that, as Teddy Sturgeon famously quipped, 90% of everything is crap.

A big reason for that are "pop cultures," which are defined as cultures/sub-cultures whose rate of change far outraces their rate of actual progress. Unfortunately, programming as a whole is one of those things.

Re: Node.js - Convincing the boss guide

#77
post #66
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As as boss, I understand that happy employees are a good thing for everyone, but similarly it is not enough to convince me to use what I see as a seriously substandard solution. From my point of view, Node.js is shaping up to be the php of 2012. It's proponents claim it's easy and fun and it's in a language that they are comfortable with. Meanwhile it's detractors see no real advantage over existing or other upcoming…

The majority of my free time goes into the Ruby/Rails ecosystem, but I decided to finally jump into javascript for real and force myself to grok things like closures and context (still strugglin'!) the past month. Node isn't a new language. It's javascript. Node just gives javascript the rest of the web stack, conventions, and a package manager that feels like Ruby gems. Javascript already is the best solution for al…

Javascript is already out there in the wild solving problems that Ruby/Python/Clojure can't.

Examples?

Re: Node.js - Convincing the boss guide

#78
post #66
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As as boss, I understand that happy employees are a good thing for everyone, but similarly it is not enough to convince me to use what I see as a seriously substandard solution. From my point of view, Node.js is shaping up to be the php of 2012. It's proponents claim it's easy and fun and it's in a language that they are comfortable with. Meanwhile it's detractors see no real advantage over existing or other upcoming…

The majority of my free time goes into the Ruby/Rails ecosystem, but I decided to finally jump into javascript for real and force myself to grok things like closures and context (still strugglin'!) the past month. Node isn't a new language. It's javascript. Node just gives javascript the rest of the web stack, conventions, and a package manager that feels like Ruby gems. Javascript already is the best solution for al…

[deleted]

Re: Node.js - Convincing the boss guide

#79
post #63
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I carefully avoided making the statement you've just deconstructed. Nothing in my original post mentions newness. The point I made is that enthusiastic and excited developers are valuable. Developers tend to find learning exciting. They could be interested in learning Rails or Django for the first time, trying out Sinatra when a full Rails app seems overkill, or exploring Node for a small and non-critical part of you…

If only a group of more than 5 developers were enthusiastic about the same thing! Your enthusiasm for node is another persons pain. I've got 1 coder enthusiastic about node, another for clojure, and another for scala. Should every project be a different language and ecosystem? What happens when programmers move around in an organization. "I think part of node's mass appeal is that it has introduced an element of simp…

Does node let you use things like libcurl? I only ask because there are libraries which already have that implemented. I don't use node so I have no idea if it can hook into system-level stuff like that.

Re: Node.js - Convincing the boss guide

#80
post #59
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the great new features of ASP.NET and C# aren't exactly new, but Microsoft have created a genuinely fun platform that a lot of people are starting to use outside of the famed "stuffy, corporate environments". We use it at a digital agency and it's been fantastic. I'm a big fan of what both Python and ASP.NET are doing at the moment, and although I have tried Ruby and Node.js I really couldn't see myself wanting t…

To the best of my knowledge, stuff like PEX is new outside of academic environments. Moreover, it's highly non-trivial. Here is a collection of other interesting projects from their research department: http://rise4fun.com/

PEX4fun could become a better FizzBuzz than FizzBuzz.
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