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Yahoo Mail moving to React

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Re: Yahoo Mail moving to React

#91

Post by mbesto »

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.

Two reasons - mobile and support. Mobile, because everything on the web is moving towards API-based backends decoupled from the presentation layer. Support, because "everyone" knows how to write JavaScript.

Re: Yahoo Mail moving to React

#92

Post by loxs »

stepstep wrote: post #67
loxs wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

All of these are valid points except 1. Node's async IO is one of its strengths. Contrast with Rails, for example, where the standard practice for concurrency is to spawn multiple processes (or, less commonly, threads). How many Rails processes can you fit on one machine? 5-10? Node can handle thousands of concurrent connections, all on a single thread. And when you hit those limits, you can always continue scaling w…

Cooperative vs. Preemptive multitasking is not the same as Light threads vs. OS threads/processes. Erlang (and also Haskell for example) does preemptive multitasking with light threads. And that's what I'm talking about.

Yeah, preemptive multitasking may be costly. But as you say, when you have lots of users, most of their tasks are sleeping or waiting for timers. That's where preemptive multitasking excels. You can have millions of sleeping tasks and several (at times) doing real work. That's why Erlang is "scalable" and node.js is not. Especially if you need to have state in your workers and if you need them to live longer.

Saying that node's cooperative multitasking excels in IO-bound computation is a clear sign that you haven't tried Erlang.

Re: Yahoo Mail moving to React

#93

Post by general_failure »

loxs wrote: post #49
general_failure wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What framework would you suggest server side?

Disclaimer: I am a full-time Erlang programmer I use several frameworks/libs for different tasks: Webmachine, N2O, Cowboy I don't believe in RoR type of frameworks. I believe in clear separation between server and client. We are steadily moving towards a web of websockets and "one page JS applications". Won't comment on whether that is nice thing or not. I am not sure for myself. For client we are stuck with JS. Suck…

Thanks for your suggestion, I will definitely look into erlang. I have tried to look into it but I have found it quite unapproachable. You have to be really motivated on your own to learn it.

Everytime someone points a erlang, they bring up whatsapp. And everytime they do that, I tell them facebook the company that owns it is a php shop (Atleast, that was the core driver. Things might be different today with hiphop).

Re: Yahoo Mail moving to React

#94

Post by twerquie »

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'm no zealot, and don't think these are absolute truths by any means but I've worked extensively on enterprise solutions in both C#/.Net and Node.js and can respond to your points below.

1. It turns out the reactor pattern is a good way to build network servers that scale reasonably well with minimal developer effort. In my experience developers tend to avoid writing threaded code in synchronous languages, and threads don't show up very often in run-of-the-mill solutions. To be sure, JavaScript's lack of threads is a blemish, but oddly it forced the community to focus heavily on distributed architectures, and as a result most of the tooling encourages distributed systems, which is a win for some common use cases.

2. Type safety is a hotly debated topic and I don't think you can find resolution on this one. For some people, "weakest of weak typing" is a benefit.

3. Static vs. dynamic, see #2.

4. Do you mean that everything must be enforced by convention instead of static code analysis, compile-time checks and type safety? If so, I think you're making the same point three times.

Erlang is a beautiful language and may be the most correct in some sense, but doesn't look nearly as attractive to the kinds of teams I work on when you start to consider developer availability, library ecosystem, tooling, ISP support, documentation and community.

Re: Yahoo Mail moving to React

#96

Post by cmicali »

dschiptsov wrote: post #89

Why on Earth people who aren't merely enthusiasts of "cool async JavaScript with V8" or those who began as a webdevs and knows nothing better than JS and PHP, could choose a single-threaded solution, which blocks the whole app if a single function blocks, and forces programmers to write spaghetti wrappers around asynchronous call-back hells in a non-functional but GC'ed language? I am really too stupid to get it. "Si…

One argument for one language everywhere is the benefits you get from an "isomorphic" app (http://nerds.airbnb.com/isomorphic-javascript-future-web-app...)

Sharing code between client and server lets reduce duplication and use the same templating/rendering on both sides. Fits very well with complex single-page apps.

That said, I'm not sure there are that many apps that really need this vs. the tradeoffs you have to make going all-in on JS and the complexity this can bring.

Re: Yahoo Mail moving to React

#97

Post by calebm »

peterwwillis wrote: post #90
cageface wrote: post #77

I've been a Javascript and Node skeptic for years now but I think the tide is finally turning. So much time and energy has been poured into making JS better that it's finally starting to pay off. Javascript with all the ES6 enhancements is really not a bad language. The runtime performance is already very good and continually getting better. Tools like Typescript and Flow make dealing with larger code bases much easi…

I'm not sure if this is a troll, or if you actually think any non-web developers would volunteer to learn Javascript just to write application code.

I did. I was very much a skeptic of Node.js, but the tools and libraries won me over. So much work is being done to make Javascript a viable platform.

Re: Yahoo Mail moving to React

#98

Post by tootie »

cageface wrote: post #77

I've been a Javascript and Node skeptic for years now but I think the tide is finally turning. So much time and energy has been poured into making JS better that it's finally starting to pay off. Javascript with all the ES6 enhancements is really not a bad language. The runtime performance is already very good and continually getting better. Tools like Typescript and Flow make dealing with larger code bases much easi…

I disagree. Every time I try to get into node, I am stonewalled by poor debugging support. I end up wading through obtuse stack traces only to find poor quality libraries are the culprit. Tracing dynamic languages is so hard already. The only thing I can tolerate is Python with Werkzeug.

Re: Yahoo Mail moving to React

#99

Post by at-fates-hands »

toong wrote: post #35
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.

Wallmart is another notable node.js user. Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6784967 http://venturebeat.com/2012/01/24/why-walmart-is-using-node-...

Also notable is their run down of a famous memory leak in NodeJS.

http://www.joyent.com/blog/walmart-node-js-memory-leak

Eran's recounting of the issue: https://www.joyent.com/developers/videos/walmart-node-js-mem...

It's interesting to note despite the memory link, the incredible amount of traffic WalMart was handling with its Mobile apps running on NodeJS. That's what was more impressive to me.

Re: Yahoo Mail moving to React

#100

Post by calebm »

mygreetings wrote: post #9

Little bit off topic but is there anyone like me in community having a problem with liking javascript? I have worked with javascript for years but it was always for DOM manipulation. When it comes to building an app with javascript, i feel like it is too fragile to depend on. Anyone can help me to get rid of this feeling?

I've been leaning toward functional programming and libraries-over-frameworks for a while now (influenced largely by the Clojure community), and when I realized that the Javascript world embraces these views, I was able to make peace with Javascript.
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