Hey guys,

First time I saw Node I was all like, "WTF, do we really need to move JS to the serverside?".

But then I read some more, watched some presentations and saw a bunch of momentum behind it and got to thinking it might be worth playing around with.

So I've written a couple of little throw away projects in Node thus far and feel like it's pretty legit.

Biggest Pro:
-Ridiculously scalable for web stuff (due to non blocking I/O)

Biggest Con:
-Everything (drivers, etc) has to be built from the ground up (due to non blocking I/O)

Err, yeah. It was late when I posted last night. Meant to wrap up with...

What do you think? Fad, or legit technology? Does Javascript have a place on the serverside? Is non-blocking I/O the wave of the future for server technology? Do you think node.js will be widely adopted, serve as a neat proof of concept that paves the way for other technologies, or ultimately prove to just be the latest in a long line of technology dujour?

Thanks!

It is way too soon to tell if node.js is going to be a thing or its just a fad.

However, node.js is AWESOME. It's really fun, if you enjoy coding you'll probably love this. Javascript is a pretty fun language and anyone in web development should know it because of its client side presence and its server side potential.

I do think non blocking io is going to be a very big thing in the future.

This site could probably be used as a good introduction: http://nodeguide.com/

Javascript *isn't* a bad language in itself. Divorcing it from the myriad problems that have come up with web browsers and their implementations, I don't see anything bad in getting some JS going on the server side at all.

I'm excited about trying it with CoffeeScript. Combining the best aspects of Javascript, Ruby, and Python = nicest syntax I've ever seen.

I haven't used Node.js but it seems like a great idea to me. Writing efficient, scalable servers is no longer the realm of the specialist, and writing async code in JS feels natural. Using the same language on both server and client also brings up all kinds of interesting possibilities. The idea of someday writing everything in CoffeeScript and having it be scalable without much effort makes me drool, and it's definitely a possibility with Node.

I haven't used it yet but I might start tinkering with it instead of python/django or python/pyramid.

Every single benchmark I've seen shows that it crushes everything else in terms of performance regardless of how many requests per second you're dealing with. A lot of people are saying it's not the right tool for the job for CRUD-type pages but that kind of doesn't make sense.

If it performs better in all/most cases and doesn't require doing anything crazy to get what you need done then what's the downside of using it?

For example, let's say a site has a blog, a few static pages, and some type of admin section to manage the blog and static pages then node might not be the best fit going by what I've seen online but I'm curious as to why.

If it can take your content and spit it back faster than apache/PHP then what's the reason not to use it?

By the way is anyone using express.js as a web framework for node? If not and you are using something else please explain.

Also what do you guys think about using mustache.js as a template system with express (or some other web framework) instead of jade? I don't have any experience with either of them. At a quick glance mustache looks better and makes more sense to me but all I care about is performance.

Instead of asking 'why not use it?' you should be asking why do you need to use it? Sure, its faster, but it's do you need your blog to be faster? Is your blog getting so many requests that the more traditional web languages/servers cannot handle it? Generally there are better ways to scale than switching to an ultra fast language.


The reason it is not used is because its new. New things tend to lack support (compare node.js to ruby for web development. frameworks, gems, etc).

I would use it because:

1. Future proofing yourself isn't a bad idea. Web pages are already starting to slowly change from static pages to full fledge web applications.

2. Having almost every part of your stack in 1 language certainly can't be a bad idea. Switching between PHP, c#, Python, Ruby or Perl + all of the popular frameworks associated with them to Javascript for your front end work is a pretty daunting task.

3. Less coding. If parts of your server side code can be pushed directly to the client then you're writing less code overall.

If it's supposedly faster and more efficient then that's just the icing on the cake.

Future proofing is a great idea, but its too hard to learn all of the languages/frameworks without having a clear idea who the winner is. Node is great, I highly recommend learning it, but there are much better languages/platforms out there for building web applications.

You'll never escape this . You'll always be using multiple frameworks, databases, webservers, etc.

You'll actually be writing more code in node.



I am not against node at all, I actually really enjoy it. However, I just want to point out that it is a new language/framework and it might not ready for full scale web development. There are probably better options out there in other languages. That said, learn node, build your site in node, enjoy node, but don't expect it to be the web development silver bullet.

I don't understand how you can't escape #2 with this.

Server side: javascript
Client side: javascript
Database: javascript (if you use something like couchdb right?)

There is already a huge project being done in node AFAIK. Cloud 9 IDE ( www.cloud9ide.com ) supposedly uses node heavily. It uses a few frameworks but it's all javascript. One of the lead developers made a presentation at a js tech conference a few months ago explaining the technologies behind their service.

If you try to put *everything* in one language eventually you're going to reinvent a wheel.

yah - the idea of limiting yourself to one language is so wtf.

I don't think it's just a passing fancy -- we sorta have it in our back pocket as something to use, but we're better at Python, so we've been using Tornado for some prototyping, but you need to be a little careful with Tornado -- really easy to bog yourself down with synchronous libs, something you don't have to worry about with node.

NodeJS is really powerful IMO. Yes, at the moment its very much the new kid on the block and so gets lots of attention because every geek wants to have a play around with it, but I think its here to stay.

Writing asynchronous code is a bit strange at first, but when it comes to web apps, it makes a LOT of sense.