Experimenting with Node.js

1. Shared code between client and server.

2. Specialization in one language.

V8 and Node are at least a very good combination for server-side Javascript.

Re: "is it absolutely not suitable for production use?"

Node in alpha state is already more production ready than many "production ready" tools.

Diesel looks great. When looking into alternatives in Erlang/Haskell/Scala, or XMPP/BOSH, either it's not easy to find quick how-to examples, or I'm looking in the wrong places. Any fingers in the right direction would be welcome.

Node is an attempt at using this successful model on the server too where is can solve massive scalability issues using the exact paradigm front-end devs already know.

Also while there are many technical ways to make code look blocking, but really be running other events under the hood, it's this exact implicit running of "other stuff" that makes writing threaded code so hard. You have to assume that things can change between every function call because you don't know if somewhere down the chain it's doing pseudo-blocking.

JavaScript's model is simple, you provide callbacks and you know exactly at what boundaries things can happen asynchronously.

In summary, node is one way of doing it. We think it's a better model and it's proven itself in the browser. If you think another model is better, than by all means go for it!

Let the leapfrogging begin ;)

The technologies you are describing were already there, but it's not just a problem of technology, feature set or execution power. It's also a matter of simplicity.

Node.js is working because it gives so much power with a very simple approach. And by approach I mean also how much is simple to understand it and start producing something useful.

That's exactly the reason why we use more abstract languages, and that's the reason why Node.js is getting a lot of attention recently. If you don't know any language, do you think it's simpler to start with Erlang or Haskell, or with JavaScript? I don't have any proof, but my bet is surely on JavaScript. :)

And even the most obvious things are important. Because maybe a uber-developer can ignore the small details, but most of the programmers aren't uber, they just want to develop easily and happily. Every little detail matters. Just see how many steps you need to install Erlang on your machine, and how many steps you need to do the same with node. It seems stupid, I know. But when you sum every detail... it matters. :)

At the same time, this gives power to the uber-programmers out there to bring on more cutting-edge solutions when they need them, and feed the "simple" level with their discoveries and experience, making the language and frameworks evolve.

If you're right, one day we are going to have simple coroutines - in the complex, environmental and social sense expressed above. Maybe even in Node.js, because in the end JavaScript 1.7 afaik supports yield and V8 could implement it in the future. ;)

Just fork of a thread per connection (using forkIO) and just call normal I/O actions. The implementation will multiplex those forkIO threads onto a single OS thread that calls epoll/kqueue.