Vert.x (JVM async) vs Node.js Http benchmarks results

Interesting results.

While it's not surprising to me that the pure java implementation was far and ahead better since: 1.) Java's much faster than Javascript, and 2.) Netty (which Vert.x is based on), has been doing high performance async IO for years before node even existed in extremely high performance environments.

What is surprising however, is that javascript on the JVM w/ vert.x is faster than V8 with node. In both cases I would assume not much JS is executed, since in Vert.x most of the executing code is still Java, with a tiny piece of JS scripting on top, and in the Node.js case, I was under the impression that most of the executing code would be the C code that powers its HTTP server.

Does anyone with knowledge of the node internals know what's going on here? Is Node's HTTP parser just slower? Is its reactor not as efficient?

Seeing these numbers (although as the author states, the data needs to be taken with a grain of salt since he didn't try to set up a more "proper" test environment) really makes me want to take a serious look at vert.x, but what you mention here is my main concern.

Node is a joy to use because of the NPM, and all the available libraries. I'd hate to lose that.

That said, so long as it has a solid websocket api, and I can do routing in it like I would express, I'd give this framework a shot

Yet another meaningless micro benchmark. There is no point in measuring a hello world http request in one framework vs. another.

There should be a larger application that even remotely resembles some kind of real world usage. Maybe some day we'll have some kind of a "standard" for a web framework benchmark, an application that actually does something so it's worth benchmarking.

Vert.x leverages the JVM so I don't think library support is really going to be much of a problem. Far from it.

I agree the "micro" benchmark isn't something people should look to as a definitive answer, but I don't think they should be outright dismissed either. If nothing else, they should be a jumping off point for real testing.