Ryan Dahl steps down

Congratulations Isaac! I worked with him at Kno. Node.js is in good hands.

At his introduction to the company at Kno, all he said was: "My name is Isaac. I do javascript."

He didn't invent the language. Just a platform that runs a language.

What does this mean for the Node community at large?

I recently had the pleasure of checking out the NodeUp podcasts. A large portion of the first episode is dedicated to enforcing the notion that Node is a new language, and that it will take decades to catch up to the maturity that Python and Perl provide as platforms.

Opening up a subprocess, or having an `os` module which works in Windows, for example, all seemed like daunting tasks that took other languages decades to perfect.

While I'm sure Node can catch up quickly, partly because Javascript is fast to write, and partly because of the trailblazing that other languages have already done (among other reasons, I'm sure), I can't help but think that the loss of the original author's momentum behind the project will cause Node to suffer.

Python has had Guido as the BDFL for over 20 years. Larry Wall is firmly entrenched in the church of Perl. Having one voice shepherding the direction of the language has had tremendous influence on both languages. I can't help but think that node.js is in a similar situation.

node.js is different. It's not a language, it's a small/extensible set of tools built on top of a solid language, and VM (V8) that are very mature.

Node.js is in great hands with Isaac. Unlike many other web/network platforms node doesn't go around gobbling up everything into core. The community behind node is stronger and contributes more than I've seen before. Focusing on that third party module system experience is a good move to further grow the community, one that Isaac has been heading for a while.

While many people will see the BDFL stepping down from a project as a bad sign, I think its the opposite. It has a dedicated and invested company behind it (Joyent), it's core doesn't try to do too much, it has legs of its own strong enough and it's community fault tolerant enough to grow quickly without him.

Ryan spawned a project that grew a community that in the long run isn't reliant on him, a rare achievement of platform/language creators.

The difference is that node.js is just an environment for an already established language to run on. Ryan accomplished a lot of great stuff with node, and Isaac will do the same. JavaScript != Node.