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Yahoo Mail moving to React

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Re: Yahoo Mail moving to React

#21

Post by hoggle »

remon wrote: post #4

What an odd trend. First Netflix moves part of their infrastructure to Node ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8631022 ) and now Yahoo is doing something similar. Node.js is great but I don't think huge enterprise systems for some of the largest brands in the world are necessarily the best fit. I wish they'd provide some insights on why they're making that particular move.

I've got first hand experience with this at a major airline - node is a surprisingly good fit for Bigco because it is encouraging modularization and has very predictable dependency management but most of all it allows you to fit it into your current systems easily and organically. There is not much convention (also an argument against it in some cases) other than being in many ways a very "unix" kind of environment (streams etc) with the added benefit of having Javascript's functional/event-driven roots.

Most of all to me node is fun which is especially important when you have to conquer problems in un-fun environments (most Bigco systems).

Re: Yahoo Mail moving to React

#22

Post by tootie »

brador wrote: post #11
remon wrote: post #4

What an odd trend. First Netflix moves part of their infrastructure to Node ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8631022 ) and now Yahoo is doing something similar. Node.js is great but I don't think huge enterprise systems for some of the largest brands in the world are necessarily the best fit. I wish they'd provide some insights on why they're making that particular move.

> I don't think huge enterprise systems for some of the largest brands in the world are necessarily the best fit Why??

Not OP, but I'll chime in. Enterprise software has some unique challenges. Enterprises deal with a galaxy of small systems, a mixture of proprietary and purchased software, a mix of IT staff and consultants, leadership who may or not have techology as a core competency, frequently a lot of bureaucracy and compliance rules, lots of long-running maintenance and as a corollary, you may retain a lot of lower-tier talent if you're recruting developers to maintain an 8 year old expense reporting system. All of these scream for safety and risk mitigation more than pushing the envelope. Static typing, schemas, battle tested development tools, lots of vendor support, big pool of talent to recruit from. There's no appetite for risk taking especially when the benefits are so hard for management to understand. As a developer at a consulting company, my peers understand technology very well but clients are 50/50. They mostly standardize on Java or .NET and and I don't think I could even put together a cogent argument of why node would help them at all. Maybe personal bias because I think node is kinda shitty and my limited exposure has been nothing but painful.

Re: Yahoo Mail moving to React

#23

Post by guard-of-terra »

remon wrote: post #4

What an odd trend. First Netflix moves part of their infrastructure to Node ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8631022 ) and now Yahoo is doing something similar. Node.js is great but I don't think huge enterprise systems for some of the largest brands in the world are necessarily the best fit. I wish they'd provide some insights on why they're making that particular move.

I don't think they have mail storage, spooling and sending implemented in node.js. I think they use both PHP before and node.js now as a front tier. And this is okay, it's where node.js shines.

Re: Yahoo Mail moving to React

#25

Post by wildpeaks »

bhouston wrote: post #13
remon wrote: post #4

What an odd trend. First Netflix moves part of their infrastructure to Node ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8631022 ) and now Yahoo is doing something similar. Node.js is great but I don't think huge enterprise systems for some of the largest brands in the world are necessarily the best fit. I wish they'd provide some insights on why they're making that particular move.

Remember that Paypal did this as well about a year ago. (This is the best link I can find quickly: https://www.paypal-engineering.com/2013/11/22/node-js-at-pay... I am sure there are more.)

Paypal recently had an interesting follow-up talk "9 anti-patterns for node.js teams" about what they learnt in the past year.

Slides: http://www.slideshare.net/jeharrell/9-antipatterns-for-nodej...

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6phif2t-wj0

Re: Yahoo Mail moving to React

#26

Post by Todd »

remon wrote: post #4

What an odd trend. First Netflix moves part of their infrastructure to Node ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8631022 ) and now Yahoo is doing something similar. Node.js is great but I don't think huge enterprise systems for some of the largest brands in the world are necessarily the best fit. I wish they'd provide some insights on why they're making that particular move.

Speaking from personal experience, I'm reluctantly moving from my favorite stack (C# MVC) to Node.js in order to be able to build an isomorphic SPA in the most straightforward way. Node is the stack of choice for JS and the obvious choice if you want to render on the client and the server using as much shared code as possible.

That said, you're still free to develop your API using your favorite technologies. To be honest, this is where the heavy lifting is, anyway, so it makes sense to have stronger typing, richer data types, etc. at this level.

Re: Yahoo Mail moving to React

#27

Post by throwawayaway »

loxs wrote: post #20
__mrwhite__ wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any particular reason why you feel like server-side JavaScript feels fragile? Also if by DOM manipulation you mean libraries like jQuery, have you tried more declarative approaches found in frameworks like Angular and React?

Few reasons: 1. Cooperative multitasking. Really? In 2014? Hello? 2. Weakest of weak typing. undefined is not a function? Anyone? 3. Everyone can override everything. 4. Conventions, that's the only way you can build software in JS. Anyone know of a person who doesn't break conventions? Having programmed in something like Erlang, which IMHO is the sanest technology available today for doing web, JS feels horrible.

I struggled to find anything I liked about javascript. Other than ease of deployment.

Re: Yahoo Mail moving to React

#28

Post by twerquie »

loxs wrote: post #12
remon wrote: post #4

What an odd trend. First Netflix moves part of their infrastructure to Node ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8631022 ) and now Yahoo is doing something similar. Node.js is great but I don't think huge enterprise systems for some of the largest brands in the world are necessarily the best fit. I wish they'd provide some insights on why they're making that particular move.

Yep, node.js is the new PHP. Not by how it works, but by "shit everyone uses". Now, I won't try to convince anyone that it's crap (while I do believe it is), but it's the modern crap technology. Welcome to 1998, we are all "modern".

Care to back up any of your assertions? If your main complaint is popularity, your argument comes off as elitist.

Re: Yahoo Mail moving to React

#30

Post by loxs »

twerquie wrote: post #28
loxs wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, node.js is the new PHP. Not by how it works, but by "shit everyone uses". Now, I won't try to convince anyone that it's crap (while I do believe it is), but it's the modern crap technology. Welcome to 1998, we are all "modern".

Care to back up any of your assertions? If your main complaint is popularity, your argument comes off as elitist.

Here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8662605
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