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After a year of using Node.js in production

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Re: After a year of using Node.js in production

#111

Post by adevine »

qwer wrote: post #110
stormbeta wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article doesn't appear to be blaming Javascript as a language, but rather the Node.js ecosystem as a server platform. Not all tools are appropriate for all niches. The author made it clear they don't have an issue with Javascript as a whole or even with Node.js necessarily, but rather the use of Node.js as a major server platform or as a platform for large applications.

All of his arguments actually apply to all of javascript, and are not actually specific to node.js though.

But there is a good argument that your server components (or at least a good portion of them) should be built in a language that requires some more up front work because it makes maintenance easier down the line.

Re: After a year of using Node.js in production

#112

Post by ctide »

qwer wrote: post #110
stormbeta wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article doesn't appear to be blaming Javascript as a language, but rather the Node.js ecosystem as a server platform. Not all tools are appropriate for all niches. The author made it clear they don't have an issue with Javascript as a whole or even with Node.js necessarily, but rather the use of Node.js as a major server platform or as a platform for large applications.

All of his arguments actually apply to all of javascript, and are not actually specific to node.js though.

Not really.

These things aren't pain points in the browser the way they are in Node. I have never felt the need for an ORM in the browser. I have never dealt with client-side code that was using so many libraries I had to worry about whether exceptions would be handled via exceptions, or the first argument of the callback, or rejected promises. No one (at least, no one I know) is installing node modules like isArray to use in the browser.

Yes, these things _could_ technically apply to the browser, but it's not commonplace. In the node world, these are all things you deal with consistently.

Re: After a year of using Node.js in production

#113

Post by santoshalper »

Node.js, meteor, et al. is a great example of what happens when you let inexperienced developers design a platform and run an ecosystem. Almost every ounce of focus in this community goes to increasing developer productivity. Operational concerns like scalability, security, monitoring, are given the bare minimum of focus. In many years of programming in many languages on many platforms I have never seen a worse platform and ecosystem than Node.js in a very popular language (obviously some obscure languages hardly have anything built around them at all).

I really think it is setting the programming world back a lot. Not to mention what a thoroughly shitty language JavaScript is. Being able to code your web app in one language is a neat trick, and the ability to talk back and forth between client and server so seamlessly does kind of feel like magic, but otherwise, this is a meaningfully worse language/platform that Visual Basic.

Re: After a year of using Node.js in production

#114

Post by krisdol »

adevine wrote: post #111
qwer wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of his arguments actually apply to all of javascript, and are not actually specific to node.js though.

But there is a good argument that your server components (or at least a good portion of them) should be built in a language that requires some more up front work because it makes maintenance easier down the line.

There is a good argument to be had on the same topic for the front end. Arguably more so.

Re: After a year of using Node.js in production

#115

Post by krisdol »

Touche wrote: post #61
Wintamute wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So somebody found a project somewhere on the internet with an exceptionally complicated build process, and you use it to say npm scripts are broken? Sorry, that's absurd. Looking at that particular build process, I don't think a Makefile could have been crafted to make it much simpler or smaller. In that example, the problem lies with the complexity of what they're having to do, not the tool. Npm scripts are really j…

It's an inflated example of what all npm script projects become, imo. First you just have "test", then you add "build", then you separate your "test" into one for the browser, one for Node, one for CI, then you need scripts that combine those together; then you create different "start" versions depending on environment... It blows up quickly. > Npm scripts are really just shell scripting, which means all the real pro…

I completely disagree that this is what all npm scripts become

>then you separate your "test" into one for the browser, one for Node, one for CI,

For the love of God why. Don't turn every language into Java

Re: After a year of using Node.js in production

#116

Post by krisdol »

Touche wrote: post #61
Wintamute wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So somebody found a project somewhere on the internet with an exceptionally complicated build process, and you use it to say npm scripts are broken? Sorry, that's absurd. Looking at that particular build process, I don't think a Makefile could have been crafted to make it much simpler or smaller. In that example, the problem lies with the complexity of what they're having to do, not the tool. Npm scripts are really j…

It's an inflated example of what all npm script projects become, imo. First you just have "test", then you add "build", then you separate your "test" into one for the browser, one for Node, one for CI, then you need scripts that combine those together; then you create different "start" versions depending on environment... It blows up quickly. > Npm scripts are really just shell scripting, which means all the real pro…

I completely disagree that this is what all npm scripts become

>then you separate your "test" into one for the browser, one for Node, one for CI,

For the love of God why. Don't turn every language into Java

Re: After a year of using Node.js in production

#117

Post by krisdol »

Touche wrote: post #61
Wintamute wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So somebody found a project somewhere on the internet with an exceptionally complicated build process, and you use it to say npm scripts are broken? Sorry, that's absurd. Looking at that particular build process, I don't think a Makefile could have been crafted to make it much simpler or smaller. In that example, the problem lies with the complexity of what they're having to do, not the tool. Npm scripts are really j…

It's an inflated example of what all npm script projects become, imo. First you just have "test", then you add "build", then you separate your "test" into one for the browser, one for Node, one for CI, then you need scripts that combine those together; then you create different "start" versions depending on environment... It blows up quickly. > Npm scripts are really just shell scripting, which means all the real pro…

I completely disagree that this is what all npm scripts become

>then you separate your "test" into one for the browser, one for Node, one for CI,

For the love of God why. Don't turn every language into Java.

Plenty of tools will not rebuilt a project if no files have changed, but the dumb, quick and easy way that requires no deendendencies is simply to delete and rebuild.

The fact that this functionality is served so well by a simple dependency shows that you don't need overly complex monolithic tools to accomplish small tasks.

Re: After a year of using Node.js in production

#118

Post by krisdol »

Touche wrote: post #61
Wintamute wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So somebody found a project somewhere on the internet with an exceptionally complicated build process, and you use it to say npm scripts are broken? Sorry, that's absurd. Looking at that particular build process, I don't think a Makefile could have been crafted to make it much simpler or smaller. In that example, the problem lies with the complexity of what they're having to do, not the tool. Npm scripts are really j…

It's an inflated example of what all npm script projects become, imo. First you just have "test", then you add "build", then you separate your "test" into one for the browser, one for Node, one for CI, then you need scripts that combine those together; then you create different "start" versions depending on environment... It blows up quickly. > Npm scripts are really just shell scripting, which means all the real pro…

I completely disagree that this is what all npm scripts become

>then you separate your "test" into one for the browser, one for Node, one for CI,

For the love of God why. Don't turn every language into Java.

Plenty of tools will not rebuilt a project if no files have changed, but the dumb, quick and easy way that requires no deendendencies is simply to delete and rebuild.

The fact that this functionality is served so well by a simple dependency shows that you don't need overly complex monolithic tools to accomplish small tasks.

Re: After a year of using Node.js in production

#119

Post by kansface »

uptownJimmy wrote: post #103
tylerlh wrote: post #40

The Netflix.com site and webapp runs on Node (and talks to a number of services written in mostly JVM based languages). While we encounter challenges just as we would with any other language -- it works for us and I would argue that it's a pretty big application. There's always a multitude of ways to get something done, and it's up to you to decide what tool will do it best. Don't treat any one language as an end-all…

Speaking only for myself, a middle-weight .NET dev who was, not too long ago, working desperately to find my footing in all this: 1. I think the learning curve to doing good work with Node is really shallow at first, and then it quickly gets almost vertical. 2. I think that ALL of the other server-side language/framework combos (Ruby/Rails, Python/Django, C#/.NET, PHP/Symfony, etc.) make it significantly easier for a…

> 2. I think that ALL of the other server-side language/framework combos (Ruby/Rails, Python/Django, C#/.NET, PHP/Symfony, etc.) make it significantly easier for a "merely-good" dev to make really good Web applications.

All of those frameworks are threaded/synchronous - they are maybe 10 times easier to use and potentially 100x slower (less concurrent) than Node. The ruby equivalent isn't rails, its eventmachine. Moving from django to twisted is probably just as hard as django to Node. 9/10s of the python ecosystem assume synchronous code so you end up with threads, processes, and callbacks.

Re: After a year of using Node.js in production

#120

Post by spion »

Silhouette wrote: post #29
joshmanders wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should try to surround yourself with developers who don't have such attitudes. I am a fan of JavaScript, I love Node.js and I will often times suggest it to newbies. But I don't pretend it's the be all/end all of languages. Just like any other language it has its strengths and weaknesses. It's up to you to decide if it's the right choice for you.

You should try to surround yourself with developers who don't have such attitudes. The trouble is that while you can do this for yourself to some extent, you can't necessarily do it for the people you have to work with. I've worked on a project where one guy came in to do a simple database back-end for an embedded system and decided Node and its ecosystem were appropriate. He seemed to have some experience with those…

Sounds like this has absolutely nothing to do with the technologies and everything to do with the developers.
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