Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Is Express.js dying?

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 77 posts

Re: Is Express.js dying?

#41

Post by pavlov »

Maybe there just isn't that much left to do? I've used Express a lot over the years, and I can't think of anything right now that it's missing. I'll be happy if it's going to be stable from now on, with no breaking changes.

More fundamentally, I feel the "web framework" doesn't need to be an exciting piece of the stack anymore, like was the case maybe ten years ago. Routing URLs and gluing together middleware doesn't need to be "interesting" or "cutting-edge".

It's great that Express makes it easy, and I'm happy to keep using it regardless of whether there's a version 5 and 6 and 7 in the works.

Re: Is Express.js dying?

#42

Post by spdustin »

SwellJoe wrote: post #36
spdustin wrote: post #34

The public airing of their dirty laundry - especially the snark from so many of the participants - would kill it in my mind. There's no good reason to have this "open and transparent" conversation devolve into "let me bitch about IBM here, but don't bitch back at me, keep to IBM-only channels". It's all very childish. The whole thing should've been on the IBM back channels until they got their shit together and could…

Linux doesn't seem to be a fair analogy. If Linux had been, somehow, acquired by a large company (or, at least, access/edit rights to all of the code repositories and web presence and such), and Linus had been removed from administrative roles on those repositories and sites (or asked to remove himself and others), then the comparison would be fair. Admittedly, one answer would be to loudly fork the project. That's h…

I think it is a fair comparison, because I think Linus WOULD loudly (and with much profanity) fork it and go back to getting shit done rather than hit slow-mo on a multi-car highway pile-up. EDIT: After further thought, I do see your point. My comparison was purely hypothetical and has some logical flaws. I'm literally guessing at how he'd handle losing control of the reins.

My takeaway was that Doug (who, I should clarify/add, I have a lot of respect for as a hard working OSS guy, but lost a few brownie points from me for this soap opera) actually did want to lead the community effort: "I ask them if I can take over the project in order to be the leadership and ensure this gets moved on," we're his exact words. I guess that is an exemplar of why committed project stakeholders need to get their messaging straight before pointing fingers: You and I had different interpretations of the actors' motivations.Nobody wins when fingers are pointing everywhere. At least someone wins when a stakeholder says, "screw you guys, I'm going to do what I know is right rather than vent about what I know is wrong." EDIT: And to his credit, Doug did try to mitigate the problems he saw with the project. I don't know why he didn't take that one last step of trading on his good name and fork the project.

In my opinion, StrongLoop folks are hard working people, more than casually invested in the nodejs community. Even the controversial npm tracking could be argued to be a logical act, to help them understand more about how their projects are used than npm can tell them. Politics (and an unfortunate exit) got the best of them.

Doug is a hard working guy. And more than casually invested in the nodejs community. Politics got the best of him, too.

I believe Doug will come to regret his participation in this drama, and will quietly go back to writing great software and leading great projects, having learned an important lesson: don't believe for a moment that BigCo gives a tiny rat's ass about you or your community's sensibilities, just be the best dev/leader you can be and don't hand the keys to anyone who isn't a trusted driver. And if they take those metaphorical keys anyway, well then, that's what forks are for.

Re: Is Express.js dying?

#43

Post by spdustin »

morebetterer wrote: post #38

The state of documentation of Express 4 is not great. You have to look at the source code to see how it really works most times, or read someone's blog about how it used to work in Express 3 - but no longer does. Whose decision was it to go from a "batteries included" web server module to one where users had to assemble a bunch of ad-hoc third party components to make a usable web server? I'm looking at you, body-par…

It seems to me that decision grew organically from a feeling of helplessness over the future of the framework. Take some of the eggs out of the basket, limit the loss.

Body-parser does have issues, though. :)

Re: Is Express.js dying?

#44

Post by marricks »

pavlov wrote: post #41

Maybe there just isn't that much left to do? I've used Express a lot over the years, and I can't think of anything right now that it's missing. I'll be happy if it's going to be stable from now on, with no breaking changes. More fundamentally, I feel the "web framework" doesn't need to be an exciting piece of the stack anymore, like was the case maybe ten years ago. Routing URLs and gluing together middleware doesn't…

The discussion brings up that there is some core functionality that should be added to just have Express keep pace, mainly implementing ES6 changes and supporting HTTP/2 (which some say should just be a new framework).

Those are not easy maintenance things to do, and certainly are important.

Re: Is Express.js dying?

#45

Post by ritchiea »

pavlov wrote: post #41

Maybe there just isn't that much left to do? I've used Express a lot over the years, and I can't think of anything right now that it's missing. I'll be happy if it's going to be stable from now on, with no breaking changes. More fundamentally, I feel the "web framework" doesn't need to be an exciting piece of the stack anymore, like was the case maybe ten years ago. Routing URLs and gluing together middleware doesn't…

That's a great point, there is a bit of friction between the idea that if an open source project isn't being actively improved it's dead and Express's mission to be a minimalist framework.

Re: Is Express.js dying?

#46

Post by [deleted] »

pavlov wrote: post #41

Maybe there just isn't that much left to do? I've used Express a lot over the years, and I can't think of anything right now that it's missing. I'll be happy if it's going to be stable from now on, with no breaking changes. More fundamentally, I feel the "web framework" doesn't need to be an exciting piece of the stack anymore, like was the case maybe ten years ago. Routing URLs and gluing together middleware doesn't…

[deleted]

Re: Is Express.js dying?

#48

Post by SwellJoe »

spdustin wrote: post #42
SwellJoe wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linux doesn't seem to be a fair analogy. If Linux had been, somehow, acquired by a large company (or, at least, access/edit rights to all of the code repositories and web presence and such), and Linus had been removed from administrative roles on those repositories and sites (or asked to remove himself and others), then the comparison would be fair. Admittedly, one answer would be to loudly fork the project. That's h…

I think it is a fair comparison, because I think Linus WOULD loudly (and with much profanity) fork it and go back to getting shit done rather than hit slow-mo on a multi-car highway pile-up. EDIT: After further thought, I do see your point. My comparison was purely hypothetical and has some logical flaws. I'm literally guessing at how he'd handle losing control of the reins. My takeaway was that Doug (who, I should c…

It's an issue in an issue tracker. Nobody's blogging about it, or doing interviews in the media. I would consider this a reasonable level of drama for an issue tracker conversation. Again, I think Doug is probably pushing this in public (though not dramatically so, again it's an issue tracker which normally would have a couple dozen readers) as a final last ditch effort to get IBM to act right. Nothing wrong with taking things public if private conversations are going nowhere fast, as tends to happen with big corporate takeovers. I don't think he needs to worry about his messaging all that much; he's not a marketer, and doesn't seem to be trying to sell anything or get elected to anything. He's just explaining what's going on, and expressing his frustration with it.

Anyway, that's how I read it all. I agree that we are interpreting things differently, and I'm probably missing a lot of detail here. I scanned the thread and missed some details you've called out. But, I tend to take an optimistic approach to stuff like this. If someone has proven they're mostly a "head down get shit done" kinda person, I'm not gonna sweat it when they pop their head up and rant for a little while when things go pear-shaped. I'd probably rant, too, if something I was working on was being killed by a corporate overlord. Then I might decide to fork the thing.

Re: Is Express.js dying?

#49

Post by tjholowaychuk »

If done correctly I think this could have been great. Two full time employees working on the project is far more than it has seen in its lifetime. I don't there has ever been even a single full-time person working on it. Lots of amazing contributions of course though. Hopefully things work out, still feels a bit more dramatic than it should be.

Re: Is Express.js dying?

#50

Post by jeswin »

spdustin wrote: post #42
SwellJoe wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linux doesn't seem to be a fair analogy. If Linux had been, somehow, acquired by a large company (or, at least, access/edit rights to all of the code repositories and web presence and such), and Linus had been removed from administrative roles on those repositories and sites (or asked to remove himself and others), then the comparison would be fair. Admittedly, one answer would be to loudly fork the project. That's h…

I think it is a fair comparison, because I think Linus WOULD loudly (and with much profanity) fork it and go back to getting shit done rather than hit slow-mo on a multi-car highway pile-up. EDIT: After further thought, I do see your point. My comparison was purely hypothetical and has some logical flaws. I'm literally guessing at how he'd handle losing control of the reins. My takeaway was that Doug (who, I should c…

Forking a project as significant as Express isn't easy; you need help from many people to get it going. You make it sound as simple as clicking a button. (Linus may pull it off easily because he's Linus, but that proves nothing.)

This "soap opera" isn't of Doug's making. What he's saying seems very fair to me: he's willing to work on it if it's a community effort, and not under a corporate banner. Throughout the thread, he gives excellent reasons which justify his stand.

> The whole thing should've been on the IBM back channels until they got their shit together and could agree on some messaging

Earlier, you said this should have been solved in IBM's internal channels. Why? Doug doesn't work for IBM, and doesn't owe them anything. He's well within his rights to protest or complain openly, irrespective of how it affects IBM.

> don't hand the keys to anyone who isn't a trusted driver

Here's a link that explains what happened https://github.com/strongloop/express/issues/2264

> just be the best dev/leader you can be ...

Oh come on! We should be thankful for the effort so many talented people are putting in FOSS, often for no financial gain.

Post reply on HN