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The Node.js Community is Quietly Changing the Face of Open Source

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Re: The Node.js Community is Quietly Changing the Face of Open Source

#11

Post by ladon86 »

hayksaakian wrote: post #2

While I understand the benefits the author presented about having many small packages, I still wonder what kind of effect this has on resolving overlapping dependencies. EX: I have package X that depends on A, B, and C and I decide to use package Y that depends on C, D, and E. D and E may very well be an alternative implementation of A and B, given the large number of packages and a finite solution space. On the one…

I think the modules which tackle very common functionality do naturally rise to the top, and end up being well-maintained and fairly standard throughout the community. A good example is mikael's request (https://github.com/mikeal/request) which I suppose is a urllib2 equivalent.

Modules like this are constantly referenced in other modules, and in tutorials etc. By scrolling down this list (https://npmjs.org/browse/depended) you can get a sense of which modules now form the community curated 'standard library' for node - if you were a new node dev looking for a very common piece of functionality for your project, this might be a good place to start looking.

Re: The Node.js Community is Quietly Changing the Face of Open Source

#12

Post by rodw »

niggler wrote: post #8

"I’ve only very rarely seen a node.js project that wasn’t on github." To an extent, that's due to npm's git integration and lack of strong free (for open source) git hosting alternatives. You can specify a git endpoint for a module import.

> You can specify a git endpoint for a module import.

But you lose some of the magic that comes from expressing dependencies through semver versioning. You can publish multiple versions of a module sourced from git, of course, but that takes a lot more manual effort for publishers than than it does to publish on npmjs.org.

Re: The Node.js Community is Quietly Changing the Face of Open Source

#13

Post by Ramone »

hayksaakian wrote: post #2

While I understand the benefits the author presented about having many small packages, I still wonder what kind of effect this has on resolving overlapping dependencies. EX: I have package X that depends on A, B, and C and I decide to use package Y that depends on C, D, and E. D and E may very well be an alternative implementation of A and B, given the large number of packages and a finite solution space. On the one…

That's actually a solved problem (in node.js at least). npm builds a node_modules tree where each package gets its own copies (with the correct versions) of its dependents. Gone are the days when people took on dependency hell for a few MB of diskspace.

Re: The Node.js Community is Quietly Changing the Face of Open Source

#14

Post by rodw »

bdcravens wrote: post #9

Seems a bit unfair to show a rate of packages per year based on the full life of each language, as the principle package repos haven't been around as long as the packages/year implies.

Also the rate of package creation probably isn't uniform over the lifetime of the language.

Re: The Node.js Community is Quietly Changing the Face of Open Source

#15

Post by shadowmint »

Obviously if Node doesnt come 'batteries included' then you have to re-invent-from-scratch all the tools like package management, dependency management, MVC libraries, etc.

That doesn't mean the community is amazing and wants to contribute! ...it means, that those features didn't exist, and someone had to do them (and yes, it's really great that they're all coming out open source, but it's not revolutionary)

Any language in that situation will have a strong initial growth as people port their favorite toys across.

I'd be much more interested to see the rate of change over-time, year by year.

Is it still growing? Is it slowing down now there are some mature frameworks?

That's interesting stuff. "Changing the face of open source?" --> selfimportantness gasbagging.

Re: The Node.js Community is Quietly Changing the Face of Open Source

#16

Post by icambron »

rodw wrote: post #10
icambron wrote: post #3

To speculate a little about the huge rate of package growth (none of this should be taken as critical of the article, which makes no claims about this): 1. Reuse - a lot of NPMs also work in the browser. There are good reasons to make your browser code run in Node too; it makes command-line-driven testing easier and it requires little additional work to add support to a whole platform. And it should be obvious why th…

> mostly because more needed to be done I agree, and think your comment is insightful, but let me add a little nuance to it. I've been doing a lot of work with Node lately. In my experience: 1. I generally don't have trouble finding a module (library) that addresses my particular need. (I.e., when I go look for a library that does X, I generally find it.) It does happen, but a lot less often than I expected. 2. I gen…

I certainly agree about the maturity/lots of small patches to existing packages part. I would guess that LOC growth in Node is (proportional to, say, Ruby) even higher than the package growth for exactly this reason: not only are there a lot of new packages, but a lot of churn in existing ones. I'll add that the lots-of-small-packages thing makes it easier for us to parachute in, grok the code base, fix the issue, and submit a PR. That's part of what makes Node fun, I think.

Re: The Node.js Community is Quietly Changing the Face of Open Source

#18

Post by jacques_chester »

bdcravens wrote: post #9

Seems a bit unfair to show a rate of packages per year based on the full life of each language, as the principle package repos haven't been around as long as the packages/year implies.

Paging Newton and Leibniz.

Newton and Leibniz to the HN thread, please.

Re: The Node.js Community is Quietly Changing the Face of Open Source

#19

Post by drivebyacct2 »

jacques_chester wrote: post #18
bdcravens wrote: post #9

Seems a bit unfair to show a rate of packages per year based on the full life of each language, as the principle package repos haven't been around as long as the packages/year implies.

Paging Newton and Leibniz. Newton and Leibniz to the HN thread, please.

I don't understand this reference. I have to say, I agreed. I don't see a lot here that is unique to node.js. If anything it's the culmination of timing that reveals the current state of advancement and collaboration in today's OSS/software world. But I think Go or Rust are emerging examples of a similar phenom.

Re: The Node.js Community is Quietly Changing the Face of Open Source

#20

Post by steveklabnik »

> It seems to me that monolithic frameworks like Rails don’t have a clear notion of what does not belong in Rails, and so they tend to expand indefinitely to include everything an application could need.

Rails 4 will see _eight_ different things that used to be in core extracted to a gem. The diff from 3.2.13 to 4.0.0.beta1 was +110,000 to - 100,000, so it's grown about 10% in the next major version.

Rails is obviously 'full stack' but it's not like it's a black hole that sucks in all Ruby code.

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