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Things I Regret About Node.js [video]

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Re: Things I Regret About Node.js [video]

#351

I think it's quite interesting to see that originally node.js was presented as a bloat-free alternative to "enterprise languages" like Java, C# or even Python or Ruby. A lot of complexity was subsequently added in an ad-hoc way which has resulted in (for example) a package management system that's wildly out of control. It's very popular of course, so I'm definitely not arguing that metric. However, the stuff that wa…

I think this is a story that gets repeated lots of times in our world of open source software dev. 1. X is SO bloated and poorly engineered full of bad legacy decisions. 2. We can totally do better let's invent a new thing, Y! 3. Wow, Y is so clean and fast and understandable. 4. But it doesn't do this thing a bunch of people reasonably really need... let's add it. (repeat 3 and 4 a few hundred times) 5. Y is so bloa…

Which really isn't so bad. Y eventually goes corporate, and is still presumably better than X, having learned from its mistakes. But for those who hate the new bloat, along comes Z and the cycle repeats itself. Chicka Chicka Boom Boom.

Re: Things I Regret About Node.js [video]

#352

Can anyone explain why he called Dart a complete failure? https://youtu.be/M3BM9TB-8yA?t=19m55s ps: I am a junior developer. I am taking up Dart to learn Mobile apps development using Flutter.

I'm on the Dart team (but I don't speak for the entire team here). Dart had two initial goals: 1. Get a native Dart VM into Chrome and eventually other browsers. 2. Get a significant number of client-side web developers that were using JavaScript to move to Dart. It's probably not obvious, but these goals are in tension with each other. In order to motivate adding a giant new VM to a browser, you need to make the lan…

Thanks for your work on Dart.

Does your team plan to release any solution like Flutter for native Desktop GUI apps?

Re: Things I Regret About Node.js [video]

#353
post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you share some sources? I tried to process simple CSV files in a very straight forward (but async) way and got reading 200mb CSV and just splitting it to columns (with simple split by comma) takes ~10 seconds. Also simplest HTTP request in express is handled in several ms and that's A LOT in my opinion.

I don't really have any explanatory sources at hand, just the source code here: https://github.com/potree/PotreeServer/blob/redo/src/Regions... Points of interest: Schedule files to be loaded. This will usually load around 1000 files: https://github.com/potree/PotreeServer/blob/redo/src/Regions... Whenever a file is loaded, iterate through the points in it, do the filtering and write the results to the output file: h…

If file buffering is the bottleneck have you tried using tools like cat to buffer the input? Buffering input and output is the sort of thing you get for free in unix.

Re: Things I Regret About Node.js [video]

#354
post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting to place today's techs on the Java maturation timeline - each became what they thought they hated but realized may have existed for some necessary reasons. New platforms bring exciting and meaningful evolution often at the cost of what techs like .net and Java have a few decade advantage in. It's also interesting to see what Java devs are innovating with themselves, Scala, Kotlin both have good thing…

The biggest problem i see is the weird hole circa 2006 that arranges with Sun selling to Oracle, that kind of still-birthed Java as the next great language. That hole I can credit as giving C# the advantage in that tight niche, and stilling the development of the JVM platform in general. By the time that the rust on JVM improvements were dusted off, all initiative was lost. Java was playing catchup to the competition…

On the other hand, Oracle has probably developed Java further much more and kept Maxime around making it into Graal.

IBM gave up on the first counter proposal, Red-Hat and Google didn't bother to rescue Sun.

So we might even have been left with either Java 6 or being forced to port our applications.

Re: Things I Regret About Node.js [video]

#355
post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it's not even independent green developers, it's everyone. Chai, mocha, jasmine, jest, should, expect, lab...omg do we really need another unit testing library? Sure they are all slightly different but there is no reason they all couldn't be condensed down to one or two libraries. Shall we list all the reactive UI frameworks? Or routing frameworks? Everyone is at fault here.

I have a feeling that JavaScript, and some other areas of open source, have a popularity contest problem - people building projects not because they're needed or useful, but for that brief moment of Internet fame.

I have the same feeling about this. Github "collect the most stars" effect?

Re: Things I Regret About Node.js [video]

#356
post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it's not even independent green developers, it's everyone. Chai, mocha, jasmine, jest, should, expect, lab...omg do we really need another unit testing library? Sure they are all slightly different but there is no reason they all couldn't be condensed down to one or two libraries. Shall we list all the reactive UI frameworks? Or routing frameworks? Everyone is at fault here.

I have a feeling that JavaScript, and some other areas of open source, have a popularity contest problem - people building projects not because they're needed or useful, but for that brief moment of Internet fame.

It gets worse when instead of your CV, you get hired by startups based on your Internet fame, or wasting your private life building Github (sorry Gitlab) portfolio.

Re: Things I Regret About Node.js [video]

#357
post #190

I've said it before and I say it again; NodeJS is an infrastructure component, not a general purpose application runtime environment. I totally recognise the IO problem in our connected world and NodeJS really does solve the problem around the "many simultaneously persistent connections", something that would be really hard to do without something like NodeJS. In essence (and in my humble opinion) NodeJS is basically…

> NodeJS really does solve the problem around the "many simultaneously persistent connections", something that would be really hard to do without something like NodeJS What part of it is really hard to do without NodeJS? You can do this easily in Go, Elixir, C++, Rust, etc.

JavaScript everywhere mentality?

Re: Things I Regret About Node.js [video]

#358

One takeaway from this is how Microsoft is killing it currently: * Much-beloved TypeScript * Much-beloved VSCode * Much-beloved GitHub If they hire Ryan to flesh out his vision for deno we'd probably need a new acronym, MAFANG On a more serious note, I wonder if deno could support a lower level construct like Observables. As much as Promises are perceived to be an improvement over callbacks, they still have major fla…

* Much-beloved Ubuntu

Just leaving it here, given Azure Sphere and WSL.

Re: Things I Regret About Node.js [video]

#359
post #197
post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you characterize the positioning of Dart with respect to Go? Dart is for client-side, Go is for server-side? I'm also curious if you see having separate languages for these roles as desirable or just incidental.

Disclaimer: I've been working with Dart for 5+ years now, I'm running several small server-side Dart apps myself, and I also contribute to the Dart app that is behind pub.dartlang.org The Dart VM itself is great for server-side, however Google is focusing on the mobile and web tooling and support. While they do develop server-side packages e.g. for AppEngine-, gRPC-, or Memcache-support, connecting to databases like…

The Dart community is tiny and package selection is incredibly limited. I'd argue that Dart would be a very poor choice for most developers. It's not easier to pick up than something like Rails or even Spring.

Re: Things I Regret About Node.js [video]

#360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe this is what Microsoft is trying to do with .NET Core. It's been successful so far, though they aren't at feature parity yet.

Yes, arguably the .NET Framework almost did it and is still one of the most productive frameworks available, but .NET Core has definitely improved things substantially. It's fast, well-designed, and full-featured and I expect usage to pick up greatly.

What I don't like in Microsoft's frameworks is that they've made lots of things multiple times in slightly different variations, like they always do with all their software (10 variations of each type of programs which were outdated before they were finished). Mostly it exists due to historical reasons, but it only underlines the problem of a multi-billion corporation having design skills of a sophomore. They redo and redo things, bloating their frameworks and increasing their number and you have to guess which CookieContainer you should use this time. It makes me understand why language designers like Rust developers insist on a small core library. Because it's better to have one separate library that will do everything regarding Cookie management (and you could control its functionality by including additional traits from it), than to have incompatible variations of it in the standard library and in each framework.
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