Ask HN: Why is Node.js hated so much?
147 comments
Any professional java developer will tell you exactly the same thing about java.
Professional java developers use a maven file which is similar to a package.json file. And it lists dozens of dependencies.
Even though java has default collections (so does javascript by the way), most developers also want Apache Commons (which could be compared to lodash)
And by default java has no DI and IOC, so most of them will install Spring Boot. The thing is, spring boot isn't just 1 dependency. There is actually a spring boot initializer website to help developers pick their dependencies. On top of that the names of Spring dependencies change between releases, sometimes they move things around.
And about persistence. In java you would need a JDBC library for ms sql server for instance. However, there are different ms sql server jdbc libraries depending of the version of the database, and depending on the version of your JRE. And in some cases you need additional libraries to add security protocols. (e.g. "bouncy castle")
And then there's JAXB which used to be included in the java framework, but has been removed since JDK8. Talk about backwards compatibility.
And what about portability. If you want to make a setup utility or installer for your software, then often they will include a copy of the Java runtime inside the installer. After all, you can't expect users to have java pre-installed. That does mean, that every installer has a footprint of 400MB+ (~the size of a JRE).
Node.js isn't that terrible now, is it?
Professional java developers use a maven file which is similar to a package.json file. And it lists dozens of dependencies.
Even though java has default collections (so does javascript by the way), most developers also want Apache Commons (which could be compared to lodash)
And by default java has no DI and IOC, so most of them will install Spring Boot. The thing is, spring boot isn't just 1 dependency. There is actually a spring boot initializer website to help developers pick their dependencies. On top of that the names of Spring dependencies change between releases, sometimes they move things around.
And about persistence. In java you would need a JDBC library for ms sql server for instance. However, there are different ms sql server jdbc libraries depending of the version of the database, and depending on the version of your JRE. And in some cases you need additional libraries to add security protocols. (e.g. "bouncy castle")
And then there's JAXB which used to be included in the java framework, but has been removed since JDK8. Talk about backwards compatibility.
And what about portability. If you want to make a setup utility or installer for your software, then often they will include a copy of the Java runtime inside the installer. After all, you can't expect users to have java pre-installed. That does mean, that every installer has a footprint of 400MB+ (~the size of a JRE).
Node.js isn't that terrible now, is it?
Every time you commit, package-lock.json is different. And when it is not, then I have 26 new vulnerabilities to be fixed by “npm audit fix”. I have zero trust in my build being reproducible, or even working one year forward.
If your package-lock changes every commit (I'm guessing this means it changes after every `npm install`) then you might have some issues within the team in terms of consistent npm/node versions, or perhaps with the registry you're using if it isn't the public registry.
In my previous role we constantly ran into issues with the integrity hash changing which was an unfortunate side effect of both the issues I mentioned above, an Artifactory npm registry and inconsistent npm/node versions
TL;DR though, it's not normal for the package-lock to change all the time.
In my previous role we constantly ran into issues with the integrity hash changing which was an unfortunate side effect of both the issues I mentioned above, an Artifactory npm registry and inconsistent npm/node versions
TL;DR though, it's not normal for the package-lock to change all the time.
Docker? That gives you immutable images to deploy. The flip side is a language like clojure, which I love, but the deps are updated at a glacial pace.
Isn't that one of Clojure's selling points?
> Every time you commit, package-lock.json is different. And when it is not, then I have 26 new vulnerabilities to be fixed by “npm audit fix”. I have zero trust in my build being reproducible, or even working one year forward.
In some of the nodejs projects I've worked, we had allu dependencies with pinned version numbers, and each week we created a ticket to track work on upgrading them. This typically involved a single commit updating package versions and running all tests. More often than not it took no work at all.
If a project just lets their dependencies change randomly and does not invest any work updating them, of course there's bound to be pain and suffering.
In some of the nodejs projects I've worked, we had allu dependencies with pinned version numbers, and each week we created a ticket to track work on upgrading them. This typically involved a single commit updating package versions and running all tests. More often than not it took no work at all.
If a project just lets their dependencies change randomly and does not invest any work updating them, of course there's bound to be pain and suffering.
I do a agree with you, but we should also keep in mind that there's a distinction between dependencies and dev dependencies.
Building and bundling for the web platform (where you have multiple browser, environments, users on different versions) is a real challenge and you actually want to have good tooling for this.
With NPM, you just bundle all of the tooling along with the dependencies you need for your actual app.
I think that's still a big improvement over projects where you first had to setup your dev environment in very specific ways just to get started (I remember this could even take days to get right for some projects I worked on).
Although I would really wish for a better standard library, or at least some "core NPM modules" which are officially agreed upon, promoted and security checked as an almost-standard-library.
Building and bundling for the web platform (where you have multiple browser, environments, users on different versions) is a real challenge and you actually want to have good tooling for this.
With NPM, you just bundle all of the tooling along with the dependencies you need for your actual app.
I think that's still a big improvement over projects where you first had to setup your dev environment in very specific ways just to get started (I remember this could even take days to get right for some projects I worked on).
Although I would really wish for a better standard library, or at least some "core NPM modules" which are officially agreed upon, promoted and security checked as an almost-standard-library.
Clearly you have a very shallow knowledge of the Node/NPM ecosystem. The very thing you mention as a downside is what empowers you to achieve the solution to the problem you want to avoid. Instead of going for the one-keystroke create-react-app, you can cherry-pick the packages you need and use that. Also packages tend to include other non-javascript files. I'd suggest you dive a bit deeper before drawing up wrong conclusions.
My huge node app has more than 50 dependencies. Total node_modules is smaller than yours.
Sounds like a bad choice of tools for a person who's is concerned that much about the disk size.
Sounds like a bad choice of tools for a person who's is concerned that much about the disk size.
Can't agree more, after spent 3-4 years with nodejs on and off, I am not going to adopt it for any future projects.
a strong 'stdlib' is a must, no other code will pull in who-knows-what packages hundreds of MB at least. Just like javascript is badly design, so does nodejs.
a strong 'stdlib' is a must, no other code will pull in who-knows-what packages hundreds of MB at least. Just like javascript is badly design, so does nodejs.
Node's tiny stdlib invites the question - which compile-to-JS language has the best standard library? Dart? Clojurescript? Strange how Typescript missed the opportunity to fix this.
Small composable packages aren’t a bad thing IMO. It’s nice to pull things together how you want without having to reimplement the same logic multiple times. Just encapsulate smaller bits of useful code into their own mini packages
Like if there’s some string manipulation thing I need, instead of copy pasting some snippet, I can pull in the micro package that already does this
Like if there’s some string manipulation thing I need, instead of copy pasting some snippet, I can pull in the micro package that already does this
I'm going to have to disagree with that. Micropackages may seem nice at first, but they're a nightmare to manage longer-term mostly due to low-skill project management. Many such packages make breaking API changes, sometimes without obeying SemVer standards. Some are effectively abandoned, and don't get updates for regular bugs, security issues, etc. Sometimes the lone developers responsible for them may delete them in a fit of pique (left-pad anyone?). Sometimes they get taken over by malicious entities who might add obvious or subtle malware to it. I'm pretty sure all of these have happened already.
That's not even what's important though. What's important is, how can you ensure that none of these things happen to any of *your* projects dependencies? It's virtually impossible when there's a thousand of them. Are you going to audit that string manipulation micro package when you first add it, and then for every version update from now on, to ensure that nobody slipped some subtle malicious code into it? And do the same for every other micro package in your project, including all of the ones that the big ticket packages depend on?
All of this would be much less relevant if it had a more fully-featured standard library.
That's not even what's important though. What's important is, how can you ensure that none of these things happen to any of *your* projects dependencies? It's virtually impossible when there's a thousand of them. Are you going to audit that string manipulation micro package when you first add it, and then for every version update from now on, to ensure that nobody slipped some subtle malicious code into it? And do the same for every other micro package in your project, including all of the ones that the big ticket packages depend on?
All of this would be much less relevant if it had a more fully-featured standard library.
makes sense in some situation but people seems to forget left pad fiasco. And the small package which you say sounds good in theory but what we get is bloated things that depends on multiple semver package. And many developers don't even have a clue whats happening which algorithm it is using and thats fair if you get millions package in nested dependencies.
However in Rust I find these packages managed properly which npm should learn.
However in Rust I find these packages managed properly which npm should learn.
> which npm should learn
More like "which the JS/TS developers should learn from"
npm is just a package manager, it's not its fault.
More like "which the JS/TS developers should learn from"
npm is just a package manager, it's not its fault.
The thing is, many other modern ecosystems have these included. You don't need a pile of dependences because you are guaranteed to have the functionality you need. Of course you will still need modules for more specific things but since the most often used functionality is already there you end up with ten packages, not a hundred or more.
How is this an argument against a larger standard library?
You have a little webapp you built with enterprise tools. Do you really need React, TypeScript and Redux?
What should I use instead? Seriously.
I know that ecosystem fairly well, and have found it pretty effective to develop in. Compared to that, we have vanilla JS, which is okay for a thing or two, but awful to make a full SPA in. Or probably like 20 other web UI frameworks, all of which probably do the same thing as far as dependencies and have a learning curve for how to use them.
And what do we mean by "enterprise" here? The issue is the dependency chains and the maintenance issues that causes. If it was really "enterprisey", you'd think they'd do a better job of having a manageable dependency chain.
I know that ecosystem fairly well, and have found it pretty effective to develop in. Compared to that, we have vanilla JS, which is okay for a thing or two, but awful to make a full SPA in. Or probably like 20 other web UI frameworks, all of which probably do the same thing as far as dependencies and have a learning curve for how to use them.
And what do we mean by "enterprise" here? The issue is the dependency chains and the maintenance issues that causes. If it was really "enterprisey", you'd think they'd do a better job of having a manageable dependency chain.
They may not need it now, but they choose this technology for a reason - maybe because they plan to develop it much more in the future. This does not mean they can't criticize its obvious flaws (which are a bit at odds with the "enterprise" part btw).
Usually, when you make a little project, you use the tools you know the best because you don't want to spend time coming up with something from scratch.
Also, it's a safe bet in case the project grows beyond the initial scope. You don't want to spend most of your time refactoring, do you?
Also, it's a safe bet in case the project grows beyond the initial scope. You don't want to spend most of your time refactoring, do you?
Redux alone contributes a lot of boilerplate to state handling. Why is it needed? It has no benefits in small apps, it’s easy to abuse to destroy performance if a future dev isn’t cued in to the way Redux state needs to be normalised, and a React useReducer state handler is trivial to refactor to a Redux one later, if needed.
The same goes for TypeScript—how many interfaces does that app really have? Is it used in strict mode or just to type the most critical things?
The same goes for TypeScript—how many interfaces does that app really have? Is it used in strict mode or just to type the most critical things?
JavaScript is a language whose flaws are well understood by experienced developers, and those flaws are massive.
I also don't particularly care for "async everything" by default. It makes your program more difficult to reason about. Rather than dealing with concurrency in a subset of your application, you now have to worry about it _everywhere_. There are only a few classes of software where the async-everything approach even makes sense.
Throw in the fact that the ecosystem is an absolute dumpster fire and you have more than enough justification.
I also don't particularly care for "async everything" by default. It makes your program more difficult to reason about. Rather than dealing with concurrency in a subset of your application, you now have to worry about it _everywhere_. There are only a few classes of software where the async-everything approach even makes sense.
Throw in the fact that the ecosystem is an absolute dumpster fire and you have more than enough justification.
Well look at Erlang/Elixir. Async everything is fine if your language is immutable and has preemptable execution.
You just write code, and the system figures out how to break things up.
But that’s a system that was designed from the ground up to be async. In JavaScript it was added after the fact, and you as a programmer have to deliberately annotate your functions to be aware of what is and isn’t async.
You just write code, and the system figures out how to break things up.
But that’s a system that was designed from the ground up to be async. In JavaScript it was added after the fact, and you as a programmer have to deliberately annotate your functions to be aware of what is and isn’t async.
Elixir and Erlang aren't async everything. Everything runs synchronously by default, you need to use separate primitives to turn it async
By the way you approach it, JavaScript isn’t async everything because you need to deliberately define a promise or async function…
However the OP and I, are talking about async everything as a programming methodology and not as a fundamental part of the base system.
However the OP and I, are talking about async everything as a programming methodology and not as a fundamental part of the base system.
Async != concurrent.
Couldn't agree more on async everything. Been building out a market charting and tracking application and boy oh boy has it been the biggest pain in the ass having a good amount of UI rendering be dependent on async calls.
Wish the UI components would just render regardless of whether or not an async call was finished, rather than have to write conditionals for the components to display based on returned promises, populated states/context... I've grown to really hate react these last few months
Wish the UI components would just render regardless of whether or not an async call was finished, rather than have to write conditionals for the components to display based on returned promises, populated states/context... I've grown to really hate react these last few months
If it wasn’t for async everything your web browser would be locked up and unresponsive half the time. It’s one reason why Electron rules the roost…. Look at how often conventions GUI apps go out to lunch.
You know you can do concurrency without async calls? Async isn't a good solution for loading data in a data heavy application, game engines doesn't do it that way and they are the most data heavy applications you can find.
Game engines are not as dependent on the network as web browsers. Usually they do all the disk I/O up front, are designed to drop events if the network goes bad, drop frames instead of hang if deadlines are missed. It’s like your compiler just skips an import if it the disk is slow.
You’re talking about very simple games here. Open world games are constantly streaming huge amounts of data, much more so than a browser, at much tighter timing limitations.
What more complex games do (simplified) is put file IO on one thread, network IO on another, and use async (worker threads with jobs) for the rest.
What more complex games do (simplified) is put file IO on one thread, network IO on another, and use async (worker threads with jobs) for the rest.
> Game engines are not as dependent on the network as web browsers
You do know that web browsers aren't implemented in Electron either and that they don't use javascript to load the resources of a web page concurrently?
You were talking about why Electron/Javascript/Node.js rules all. I'm not aware of any web browser implemented in those technologies. I know Electron is based on chromium, meaning they used a browser to implement it, but I am talking about the other way around ie implementing a browser in Electron.
You do know that web browsers aren't implemented in Electron either and that they don't use javascript to load the resources of a web page concurrently?
You were talking about why Electron/Javascript/Node.js rules all. I'm not aware of any web browser implemented in those technologies. I know Electron is based on chromium, meaning they used a browser to implement it, but I am talking about the other way around ie implementing a browser in Electron.
It is the other way around.
Electron embeds a web browser, which is a highly complex asynchronous application which is written in C++ by one of only a handful of super high tech companies. It is notorious that efforts to make web browsers with other runtimes (e.g. Hotjava) have failed.
The web browser is async from top to bottom so it never blocks when loading possibly hundreds of resources that make up a web page. JavaScript is asynchronous so it can be embedded in the web browser, if it wasn’t it could lock the whole thing up.
I looked at what the options were for cross-platform guis written by applications programmers and they were not pretty, had serious warts, and all went out for long lunch breaks.
Electron embeds a web browser, which is a highly complex asynchronous application which is written in C++ by one of only a handful of super high tech companies. It is notorious that efforts to make web browsers with other runtimes (e.g. Hotjava) have failed.
The web browser is async from top to bottom so it never blocks when loading possibly hundreds of resources that make up a web page. JavaScript is asynchronous so it can be embedded in the web browser, if it wasn’t it could lock the whole thing up.
I looked at what the options were for cross-platform guis written by applications programmers and they were not pretty, had serious warts, and all went out for long lunch breaks.
Pretty sure that browsers loads resources in one dedicated thread just like complicated games do. It is a solid and simple technique to implement in C++, there are many good tools to handle that. That isn't the hard part of making a browser, the hard part is implementing all the different file formats/videos, rendering and scripting engine, security etc.
Godot use "Servers"[0] to implement the game loop, which is async by design.
[0] - https://godotengine.org/article/why-does-godot-use-servers-a...
[0] - https://godotengine.org/article/why-does-godot-use-servers-a...
I have a conspiracy, because nodejs is single threaded asynchronous event loop, hence it is easy to temporarily freeze the entire application by mistakenly introduce a tick anywhere in your application that is just too long what it should be, thus the closer you get to a large monolith the more likely it is that your application has reoccurring freezes.
My conspiracy theory is that this phenomenon partly created the need of microservices within the web community and by that creating entire new set of problems that needed to be solved.
My conspiracy theory is that this phenomenon partly created the need of microservices within the web community and by that creating entire new set of problems that needed to be solved.
The ecosystem's problems are also amplified by the patchiness of Node's stdlib -- often that ecosystem is all you've got.
>I also don't particularly care for "async everything" by default.
I understand your complaint.
Just to add some historical background, Node.js creator Ryan Dahl deliberately architected it that way. He thought threads to express concurrency had flaws. (Especially for i/o tasks instead of cpu-bound tasks). An excerpt[2]:
>“Node was originally born out of this problem — how can you handle two things at the same time? Non-blocking sockets is one way. Node is more or less the idea, or exploring the idea: what if everything was non-blocking? What if you never waited for any IO to happen?”
It's interesting that around the same time, a JVM-based competitor called Vert.x adopted the same philosophy. An example discussion on HN where some favor async by default: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3928738
[1] https://medium.com/softup-technologies/node-js-internals-lib...
[2] https://siliconangle.com/2013/04/01/the-birth-of-node-where-...
I understand your complaint.
Just to add some historical background, Node.js creator Ryan Dahl deliberately architected it that way. He thought threads to express concurrency had flaws. (Especially for i/o tasks instead of cpu-bound tasks). An excerpt[2]:
>“Node was originally born out of this problem — how can you handle two things at the same time? Non-blocking sockets is one way. Node is more or less the idea, or exploring the idea: what if everything was non-blocking? What if you never waited for any IO to happen?”
It's interesting that around the same time, a JVM-based competitor called Vert.x adopted the same philosophy. An example discussion on HN where some favor async by default: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3928738
[1] https://medium.com/softup-technologies/node-js-internals-lib...
[2] https://siliconangle.com/2013/04/01/the-birth-of-node-where-...
An excellent answer.
Although JS has problems, it did already win so Node.js is useful in that sense. But async everything is nutso and requires lots of gating and checking mechanisms in order to get back to synchronous, imperative behavior which is what you normally want in a scripting language.
The setup/versioning and dependency hell issues of Node are absolutely bonkers. I work on a monrepo of 400,000 lines of code at work and I think most of the Node stuff is "just guessing" when people run it. Secret incantations that don't make any sense and have to be copy/pasted. All of Node is like this.
Although JS has problems, it did already win so Node.js is useful in that sense. But async everything is nutso and requires lots of gating and checking mechanisms in order to get back to synchronous, imperative behavior which is what you normally want in a scripting language.
The setup/versioning and dependency hell issues of Node are absolutely bonkers. I work on a monrepo of 400,000 lines of code at work and I think most of the Node stuff is "just guessing" when people run it. Secret incantations that don't make any sense and have to be copy/pasted. All of Node is like this.
> Although JS has problems, it did already win
In what way did it "win"? People use JS because it is in the browser, do you have any data that JS won anywhere except the browser? Pretty sure it isn't even the most popular solution for web backends.
In what way did it "win"? People use JS because it is in the browser, do you have any data that JS won anywhere except the browser? Pretty sure it isn't even the most popular solution for web backends.
It's also the most popular language for Lambda functions on AWS.
Lambda functions are just a back end framework tightly coupled to a cloud service, they go in the web backend bin and aren't their own thing. Javascript might be the most popular there but I doubt lambda functions makes a significant dent in the overall web backend landscape.
That's a tarted-up container environment, irrelevant to node.js as such.
I never got why there is just one. The script tag can take any number of languages.
While support for multiple languages was the plan all along (the spec for the script tag mentions "text/tcl" along with javascript and vbscript)[0,1], browser makers never bothered to support other languages when javascript became the popular choice, apart from Microsoft with VBScript and Chrome with Dart, whose languages were vendor specific.
Eventually, people just compiled code written in other languages into Javascript, treating it more as an "assembly language for the web"[2] than a language directly coded in, and the script type attribute was officially deprecated from the script tag in HTML5.
[0]https://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/interact/scripts.html
[1]https://eager.io/blog/a-brief-history-of-weird-scripting-lan...
[2]https://www.hanselman.com/blog/javascript-is-assembly-langua...
Eventually, people just compiled code written in other languages into Javascript, treating it more as an "assembly language for the web"[2] than a language directly coded in, and the script type attribute was officially deprecated from the script tag in HTML5.
[0]https://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/interact/scripts.html
[1]https://eager.io/blog/a-brief-history-of-weird-scripting-lan...
[2]https://www.hanselman.com/blog/javascript-is-assembly-langua...
What properties would a new language make an interesting alternative?
What common problem suffers the most solved in js? Preferably something without hope for improvement.
What common problem suffers the most solved in js? Preferably something without hope for improvement.
Given how practically all Javascript nowadays is generated by Typescript or other compile-to-js languages, probably a stricter type system, actual integers and doubles (JS only uses floats,) maybe as often mentioned, a bigger standard library.
There probably isn't much benefit to different languages if you're just manipulating the DOM (which is probably why that model failed, having more than one language doing the exact same thing is needless extra complexity) but using the browser as an application runtime opens up the possibility of making any software written in a supported language accessible and executable from a URL.
The "JS as bytecode" model got us surprisingly far, but it was a disgusting hack, and Java applets and Flash had their day in the sun, but Webassembly is probably what's going to make the "multiple scripts in the browser" model eventually feasible.
There probably isn't much benefit to different languages if you're just manipulating the DOM (which is probably why that model failed, having more than one language doing the exact same thing is needless extra complexity) but using the browser as an application runtime opens up the possibility of making any software written in a supported language accessible and executable from a URL.
The "JS as bytecode" model got us surprisingly far, but it was a disgusting hack, and Java applets and Flash had their day in the sun, but Webassembly is probably what's going to make the "multiple scripts in the browser" model eventually feasible.
Thinking about it there are so many angles from which one could approach it.
It could not be required to run the script. For example require the visitor has his own website and have the script interact with specified tools installed there. Or a very limited language that disables js for security.
It could be a highly readable DSL, for example something to write interpreters in.
Or something narrow like interact with a rich text editor or data visualizations.
Perhaps a basic game engine.
It could not be required to run the script. For example require the visitor has his own website and have the script interact with specified tools installed there. Or a very limited language that disables js for security.
It could be a highly readable DSL, for example something to write interpreters in.
Or something narrow like interact with a rich text editor or data visualizations.
Perhaps a basic game engine.
"async/await" makes it very easy to reason about async stuff-- async stuff can be done in series, or it can branch off into a pyramid structure of tasks, etc.
I think its awesome :D
I think its awesome :D
I had the unfortunate displeasure of selecting Node for a take home interview. My simple express API was working fine when testing with Insomnia but the test suite was a convoluted pile of crap built from different npm frameworks and plugins. At the end of the time slot I had three failing tests for reasons I couldn’t figure out and and my submission was probably automatically rejected.
Oh well, I learned I never want to touch Node again.
Oh well, I learned I never want to touch Node again.
Probably you would have had this problem with any other platform you were not familiar with.
Tests can be written properly and in a very reliable way in any platform, and a mess can be made in any platform too.
Tests can be written properly and in a very reliable way in any platform, and a mess can be made in any platform too.
Node is hated because programmers are highly opinionated (not in a negative way). Everything with huge usage gets hate, because everything has flaws and trade offs. People get forced to use it at work, sometimes to solve the wrong kinds of problems for it's strengths, which amplifies the dislike. It's the nature of the beast.
I disagree. Python doesn't get anywhere near the amount of hate as Javascript. Ruby never had that level of hate. Go attracts some criticism, but it also has a lot of ardent supporters. I have extremely negative feelings about Java, but when I work on a Java project, I can't assume that everybody working with me feel the same way. Lots of people who work with Java find it tolerable or even pleasant. Javascript is like PHP; when you join a group of people working in it, you can freely shit on the language without worrying that you're going to hurt anybody's feelings, because everybody hates it. Even people who love it, hate it.
That's interesting. I hate Java and actually like JS. I used to make the same assumption too, that everyone just hated Java and it was easy to hate on.
I used to apply for JS jobs, and the interview would have questions like "What do you dislike about JS?" I couldn't find much to dislike and never got those jobs. Maybe it's a sign of proficiency when you're good enough at a language to hit its limits.
I'd say the other effect is when you join projects built by experienced but non-senior people, it tends to be overengineered. Overengineering shows the ugly side of a language. Everyone assumes that this is normal behaviour for the language, when it's frequently not.
I used to apply for JS jobs, and the interview would have questions like "What do you dislike about JS?" I couldn't find much to dislike and never got those jobs. Maybe it's a sign of proficiency when you're good enough at a language to hit its limits.
I'd say the other effect is when you join projects built by experienced but non-senior people, it tends to be overengineered. Overengineering shows the ugly side of a language. Everyone assumes that this is normal behaviour for the language, when it's frequently not.
As an outsider, I see nodejs differently from js in general. I think nodejs has its flaws, in particular in the ecosystem, but general js is just garbage all the way. I think a lot of people see it this way.
I hate:
- the sense that I never really can be sure where the code is executing at a glace;
- the (compared to Python) cruft-laden syntax
JSON was a win. I nearly forgive JavaScript for begetting JSON.
- the sense that I never really can be sure where the code is executing at a glace;
- the (compared to Python) cruft-laden syntax
JSON was a win. I nearly forgive JavaScript for begetting JSON.
no other language had anywhere near the amount of users who were put onto it, regardless of their tastes. js is ubiquotous, node js highly present.
and unlike these other languages there s not usually one or two ways of doing things. there's so many different frameworks, build tools, countless stacks beyond measure. when someone is force converted onto node they're more likely than not to have poor footing, be unable to make the typical sloe steady grind into proficiency they would with a less diverse language like python or ruby.
and unlike these other languages there s not usually one or two ways of doing things. there's so many different frameworks, build tools, countless stacks beyond measure. when someone is force converted onto node they're more likely than not to have poor footing, be unable to make the typical sloe steady grind into proficiency they would with a less diverse language like python or ruby.
> Node is hated because programmers are highly opinionated (not in a negative way).
And in a negative way as well :-) Ask me how I feel about php.
This is, though, a very excellent point.
And in a negative way as well :-) Ask me how I feel about php.
This is, though, a very excellent point.
> Ask me how I feel about php.
Negative views about PHP is completely justified :)
Negative views about PHP is completely justified :)
Fun fact: PHP stands for "People Hate Perl"
Perl is not a bad language. Neither is PHP. I'm using both. And to be honest - it's all about collaboration. Writing something for myself? Perl. Writing anything which will involve anyone else? PHP.
writing something that you don't mind if you hate after? PHP. Writing something that you don't mind if you hate after AND if you don't mind if you hate yourself after: Perl
Don't get me started.
Everything has flaws and trade offs, but some things have more flaws than others.
You wouldn't make this statement if to compare bogosort and quicksort, would you?
JavaScript sucks. It isn't the best choice for any problem except where you are forced to use it (the web browser). The only reason we still have it is inertia. PHP is in the same camp.
Programming languages have evolved. We know how to do better now.
You wouldn't make this statement if to compare bogosort and quicksort, would you?
JavaScript sucks. It isn't the best choice for any problem except where you are forced to use it (the web browser). The only reason we still have it is inertia. PHP is in the same camp.
Programming languages have evolved. We know how to do better now.
Here's the thing. JS does not suck. Node does not suck. They exist and are widely used precisely because they do not suck and deliver many advantages that are preferred by many developers over alternatives.
I hate Python and could go on all day about what's wrong with it, but it doesn't suck. I use it when it is appropriate for the task at hand, but find it is rarely the best language for the job - given what I know and what I prefer.
Most people that hate a language also avoid it and, therefore, tend to not have made their peace with its shortcomings, so don't have an honest reckoning.
It is unfair to completely disparage a language until you have fully figured out how to understand and work with it, warts and all. Frankly, until then, you aren't yet informed enough to make a summary judgement. You are just cherry-picking your dislikes.
I have rarely heard a criticism that did anything but highlight the critic's lack of knowledge. For example, there is a common criticism about the lack of a standard library. Well, that is how the ES or Node ecosystems are structured. It is not a flaw - it is just a different approach. If you work intelligently within that paradigm, it is actually quite nice. If you hold onto your expectation that a standard library is a part of any respectable ecosystem, you're going to be perpetually dissatisfied with ES/Node. It may not be what you like or expect, but it is not inherently wrong or lacking.
Parenthetically, anyone who makes the standard library complaint about Node just doesn't know Node. It has a very complete set of functionality natively, for its purpose. It is not going to offer much in the way of math operations, sorting algorithms, etc. That is not its purpose. If you want those things, you can add them.
If you think that a given dependency is too big, too small, incomplete, or poorly managed, write your own, and publish it like many have done.
But be warned - if it gets popular, there will be no end of complaints about what's wrong with your library because ... well ... it is actually developers who suck. We have opinions and are quick to convince ourselves that those opinions are fact and anyone who disagrees is not as smart as we are.
I hate Python and could go on all day about what's wrong with it, but it doesn't suck. I use it when it is appropriate for the task at hand, but find it is rarely the best language for the job - given what I know and what I prefer.
Most people that hate a language also avoid it and, therefore, tend to not have made their peace with its shortcomings, so don't have an honest reckoning.
It is unfair to completely disparage a language until you have fully figured out how to understand and work with it, warts and all. Frankly, until then, you aren't yet informed enough to make a summary judgement. You are just cherry-picking your dislikes.
I have rarely heard a criticism that did anything but highlight the critic's lack of knowledge. For example, there is a common criticism about the lack of a standard library. Well, that is how the ES or Node ecosystems are structured. It is not a flaw - it is just a different approach. If you work intelligently within that paradigm, it is actually quite nice. If you hold onto your expectation that a standard library is a part of any respectable ecosystem, you're going to be perpetually dissatisfied with ES/Node. It may not be what you like or expect, but it is not inherently wrong or lacking.
Parenthetically, anyone who makes the standard library complaint about Node just doesn't know Node. It has a very complete set of functionality natively, for its purpose. It is not going to offer much in the way of math operations, sorting algorithms, etc. That is not its purpose. If you want those things, you can add them.
If you think that a given dependency is too big, too small, incomplete, or poorly managed, write your own, and publish it like many have done.
But be warned - if it gets popular, there will be no end of complaints about what's wrong with your library because ... well ... it is actually developers who suck. We have opinions and are quick to convince ourselves that those opinions are fact and anyone who disagrees is not as smart as we are.
Something that I don't see mentioned here, but which I believe drives a lot of the controversy around Node, is that it takes an extremely unopinionated approach to web development.
That is, Node.js out of the box is really just a javascript runtime. You need a package to serve html, you need to decide on an application architecture and organizational structure, you need to choose an ORM. You need to make a lot of decisions that other web frameworks like Django or Rails just make for you when you build a project.
The lack of opinionated defaults has some benefits: - It gives you a ton of flexibility - It makes it easy to learn the framework, since there's no magic. - It forces the team to really understand what the application does from first principles, again since there is no magic.
The other side of this coin is that flexibility often leads to architectural chaos, and working with Node can feel very slow, since you're constantly reinventing the wheel.
The reality is that 80% of the things I'm building basically just need some variety of MVC with a reliable and predictable way to connect to a SQL database, and Node doesn't feel like the right tool for that job.
That is, Node.js out of the box is really just a javascript runtime. You need a package to serve html, you need to decide on an application architecture and organizational structure, you need to choose an ORM. You need to make a lot of decisions that other web frameworks like Django or Rails just make for you when you build a project.
The lack of opinionated defaults has some benefits: - It gives you a ton of flexibility - It makes it easy to learn the framework, since there's no magic. - It forces the team to really understand what the application does from first principles, again since there is no magic.
The other side of this coin is that flexibility often leads to architectural chaos, and working with Node can feel very slow, since you're constantly reinventing the wheel.
The reality is that 80% of the things I'm building basically just need some variety of MVC with a reliable and predictable way to connect to a SQL database, and Node doesn't feel like the right tool for that job.
I think you're not seeing it mentioned here because this is comparing apples to oranges. Node is not a web development platform, it literally IS only a runtime.
Rather than comparing with Django or Rails, one should instead compare it to Python and Ruby. There are several server side web framework for NodeJS also (Meteor, Sails, Express).
It's possible you may have confused Node with Express, as I see that happening very frequently, but Node is used for all sorts of other workloads like desktop apps, microservices, and other general computing tasks.
Rather than comparing with Django or Rails, one should instead compare it to Python and Ruby. There are several server side web framework for NodeJS also (Meteor, Sails, Express).
It's possible you may have confused Node with Express, as I see that happening very frequently, but Node is used for all sorts of other workloads like desktop apps, microservices, and other general computing tasks.
Comparing Node with Ruby and Python is still apples to oranges. The nearest equivalent would be comparing Node with Rack (Ruby) or WSGI (Python).
Can’t remember where I first heard this but I think it applies here: There are two kinds of programming languages. Those people complain about and those no one uses.
EDIT: To add a more constructive comment: Don’t worry too much when people hate on a given language and don’t try to make a decision based on what tool or language people are complaining about. Every tool has its usefulness and its drawbacks.
EDIT: To add a more constructive comment: Don’t worry too much when people hate on a given language and don’t try to make a decision based on what tool or language people are complaining about. Every tool has its usefulness and its drawbacks.
I think you are quoting Bjarne Stroustrup (C++ creator).
Because of this:
https://i.redd.it/h7nt4keyd7oy.jpg
I remember back in the late 2000's/early 2010s, there was a blogger, I think at google, who claimed that "the next programming language has already been chosen for you". In retrospect, he was clearly talking about javascript, which got a tremendous push from the big tech players despite all its obvious problems. Now we are stuck with a mess of code written in an ugly language.
Why the big guys picked javascript, I don't know. Maybe to ensure that everyone was so bogged down in dependencies, language incompatibilities and callback hell that no competitors would arise?
EDIT: It was Steve Yeggie, back in 2007: https://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2007/02/next-big-language.h...
https://i.redd.it/h7nt4keyd7oy.jpg
I remember back in the late 2000's/early 2010s, there was a blogger, I think at google, who claimed that "the next programming language has already been chosen for you". In retrospect, he was clearly talking about javascript, which got a tremendous push from the big tech players despite all its obvious problems. Now we are stuck with a mess of code written in an ugly language.
Why the big guys picked javascript, I don't know. Maybe to ensure that everyone was so bogged down in dependencies, language incompatibilities and callback hell that no competitors would arise?
EDIT: It was Steve Yeggie, back in 2007: https://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2007/02/next-big-language.h...
Haha, nice link. Yeah, pretty much this.
I'd expand on it to answer the original question more fully from my perspective: I don't actually hate node.js per se. I'm sure it's a very good javascript environment.
For me, the problem is a fundamental one: you're choosing to write javascript somewhere where you don't have to be writing javascript. I disagree on principle with doing that: friends don't let friends choose js. For me, any technical merits of the implementation and the benefits of running the same code on both server and client sides aren't important - IMO you're better off to just use a good language instead, only using as much js as is absolutely necessary.
I literally don't think I've ever seen anybody try to argue that js is a good language. I can't conceive of anybody trying to argue that such a pitiful standard library is a good idea. Why in god's name would you choose to use it server side when you could be writing something less excruciating like perl or php or assembler or brainfuck?
> Why the big guys picked javascript, I don't know.
To be fair, they never really picked it per se, it was just the only thing that was kinda-sorta standardised enough that you could write code and kinda-sorta-almost get it to run on most browsers without installing some horrible plug-in. I think a more appropriate question is why it never got replaced with something not-awful.
I'd expand on it to answer the original question more fully from my perspective: I don't actually hate node.js per se. I'm sure it's a very good javascript environment.
For me, the problem is a fundamental one: you're choosing to write javascript somewhere where you don't have to be writing javascript. I disagree on principle with doing that: friends don't let friends choose js. For me, any technical merits of the implementation and the benefits of running the same code on both server and client sides aren't important - IMO you're better off to just use a good language instead, only using as much js as is absolutely necessary.
I literally don't think I've ever seen anybody try to argue that js is a good language. I can't conceive of anybody trying to argue that such a pitiful standard library is a good idea. Why in god's name would you choose to use it server side when you could be writing something less excruciating like perl or php or assembler or brainfuck?
> Why the big guys picked javascript, I don't know.
To be fair, they never really picked it per se, it was just the only thing that was kinda-sorta standardised enough that you could write code and kinda-sorta-almost get it to run on most browsers without installing some horrible plug-in. I think a more appropriate question is why it never got replaced with something not-awful.
The larger book covers things like scripting CSS and SVGs and goes in to exhaustive detail about the language. If you subtract the smaller from the larger the resulting set is not “bad parts of JavaScript “
One person’s opinion of Python’s good parts would be equally small and any opinion would be very small compared it to the entire official documentation.
One person’s opinion of Python’s good parts would be equally small and any opinion would be very small compared it to the entire official documentation.
For me, it's less an equation of active hate. I can actually see why some people like it, and I wouldn't want to get in anyone's way on that.
That said, I have found that the .NET ecosystem is an agreeable way to build the kind of software I need to build. I don't think my product would be infeasible in a Node.JS ecosystem, but it would certainly be more painful for reasons that are specific to our problem domain.
If I had to take a shot across the proverbial HN language war deck, I would say that dependency management is the biggest reason I would prefer to avoid Node.JS on future projects. I have a very complex .NET code base which uses 3rd party dependencies you can count on one hand. Our customers really enjoy that kind of thing.
That said, I have found that the .NET ecosystem is an agreeable way to build the kind of software I need to build. I don't think my product would be infeasible in a Node.JS ecosystem, but it would certainly be more painful for reasons that are specific to our problem domain.
If I had to take a shot across the proverbial HN language war deck, I would say that dependency management is the biggest reason I would prefer to avoid Node.JS on future projects. I have a very complex .NET code base which uses 3rd party dependencies you can count on one hand. Our customers really enjoy that kind of thing.
It’s hated by people who have either never bothered with it and are on the JS hate train, or it’s hated by people who had to deal with poorly executed code. If you know the use case fits, then it’s great and will help you scale fast at minimal cost. However that takes a bit of experience to understand/implement.
It has some flaws sure, but unless you’re going out of your way to use poor practices or using node for a task it isn’t great for, that’s kinda on you right?
Used node for many things, including services currently in use by many millions of users. It’s just a tool in the toolbox, so use it like one where it makes sense.
It has some flaws sure, but unless you’re going out of your way to use poor practices or using node for a task it isn’t great for, that’s kinda on you right?
Used node for many things, including services currently in use by many millions of users. It’s just a tool in the toolbox, so use it like one where it makes sense.
My guess is because:
- lots of people don't like Javascript
- lots of people don't like V8
- the guy who made Node.js (Ryan Dahl) doesn't like it either
- programmers think anything without thread support is a toy
I like Node.js, Javascript, and Ryan Dahl, and have no strong opinions on V8.
- lots of people don't like Javascript
- lots of people don't like V8
- the guy who made Node.js (Ryan Dahl) doesn't like it either
- programmers think anything without thread support is a toy
I like Node.js, Javascript, and Ryan Dahl, and have no strong opinions on V8.
It falls in an awkward place.
It is dominated on the server because Java, C#, Elixir, Erlang have a concurrency and parallelism story and node doesn’t.
For most scripting work it is hard to beat Python even if Python is slow.
Sometimes I think compiler and tools writing for node might be fun (boy the world needs an ISO common logic implementation that isn’t hets and Haskell) but compiler and tools writing in Java is fun too, particularly in JDK 16. (Think ‘Haskell the good parts’.)
It is dominated on the server because Java, C#, Elixir, Erlang have a concurrency and parallelism story and node doesn’t.
For most scripting work it is hard to beat Python even if Python is slow.
Sometimes I think compiler and tools writing for node might be fun (boy the world needs an ISO common logic implementation that isn’t hets and Haskell) but compiler and tools writing in Java is fun too, particularly in JDK 16. (Think ‘Haskell the good parts’.)
> compiler and tools writing in Java is fun too, particularly in JDK 16. (Think ‘Haskell the good parts’.)
I would love a more in-depth exploration about this part of your message, if you have some time. I didn't explore the compiler/tools ecosystem for Java for some time, would love to know the advances it got that prompted your message.
I would love a more in-depth exploration about this part of your message, if you have some time. I didn't explore the compiler/tools ecosystem for Java for some time, would love to know the advances it got that prompted your message.
I just like it personally. For one thing you have the solid jvm runtime, ides that work, good performance, etc.
With sealed types, var, and similar features, pattern matching, it is getting better all the time in small ways.
I recently wrote a dsl in Java that lets you write a Java AST , transform it as a tree, write Java source code, compile it. It is not quite as simple as doing the same in LISP and you have to mangle names a little to unerase types, but the IDE helps you find the names.
With sealed types, var, and similar features, pattern matching, it is getting better all the time in small ways.
I recently wrote a dsl in Java that lets you write a Java AST , transform it as a tree, write Java source code, compile it. It is not quite as simple as doing the same in LISP and you have to mangle names a little to unerase types, but the IDE helps you find the names.
> For most scripting work it is hard to beat Python even if Python is slow.
Apropos of nothing...
I find Python to be unreadable. I have a moderate reading issue and Python just looks like random letters to me. I actually wish I could process it as there are some very nice tools that I see people make that use Python.
Apropos of nothing...
I find Python to be unreadable. I have a moderate reading issue and Python just looks like random letters to me. I actually wish I could process it as there are some very nice tools that I see people make that use Python.
With Python it is about the ecosystem. Although jupyter is second only to Excel in ‘programming model not fit to purpose’ you can get it done w/ pandas, sci-kit learn, pillow, etc. Maybe I am crazy but I think it is fun writing async clientservers in Python.
I know V8 from the inside out (used it as a standalone component on several of my projects) and it truly is a modern engineering marvel.
Being heavily coupled to the front-end. There's a perceived attitude that many Node devs are just front-end devs with enough back-end knowledge to be dangerous. With this is the overloading of the term "full stack".
The early perceived coupling with MongoDB didn't help.
The early perceived coupling with MongoDB didn't help.
I used to hate it, but async/await, typescrypt and ts-node makes it more acceptable nowadays.
I love node.js. I also love Python and Zig. Different tools for different jobs. Any one is really bad for some things and amazingly good at others.
I don’t think it’s Node that people don’t like. It’s more the ecosystem and developers around it. An example would be people focusing more on branding and landing pages.
I don't like Node, either. Having one company and one package manager entirely control a formerly open and decentralized programming language ecosystem is a regressive step from what we had before. I also don't believe Javascript should be used as a general purpose programming language outside of the browser. I don't hate JS, but it's a very flawed language designed for a specific, niche purpose and the amount of effort put into making it "enterprise worthy" (which seems to fail spectacularly and publicly just about every week or so, in ways no other language has to deal with) is the reason the JS ecosystem is a such Lovecraftian horrorshow.
I don't hate node, I just realized that on the server-side, by the time I added enough modules to make something work I could get better performance from a Jakarta EE application server and write far less code.
Go's standard library comes with a lot of the same batteries built in and while I write more code in Go, the compiled binary is small (good for container management) and I use less dependencies.
So that last sentence is the key. When I was writing a lot of Java, I learned to curate my dependency graph carefully. When writing in Go, I've become even more careful to only use widely-adopted packages though I'm a bit more lenient with test-only package.
I've predominately stopped using Node.js because it's dependency graph is simply unmanageable. Node.js itself provides a facade of multiprocessing as well as other niceties you'd expect to find on the server-side but to do anything substantial you either need to code it yourself or you adopt a huge dependency tree. Downstream security vulnerabilities and bugs mean you're continuously updating versions and it's not always pretty.
Now that I've adopted the write a bit more code and use fewer dependencies mentality, perhaps I should try another project in Node.js. I have to admit that Typescript (and even some of the EMCA improvements) also make it more attractive.
Go's standard library comes with a lot of the same batteries built in and while I write more code in Go, the compiled binary is small (good for container management) and I use less dependencies.
So that last sentence is the key. When I was writing a lot of Java, I learned to curate my dependency graph carefully. When writing in Go, I've become even more careful to only use widely-adopted packages though I'm a bit more lenient with test-only package.
I've predominately stopped using Node.js because it's dependency graph is simply unmanageable. Node.js itself provides a facade of multiprocessing as well as other niceties you'd expect to find on the server-side but to do anything substantial you either need to code it yourself or you adopt a huge dependency tree. Downstream security vulnerabilities and bugs mean you're continuously updating versions and it's not always pretty.
Now that I've adopted the write a bit more code and use fewer dependencies mentality, perhaps I should try another project in Node.js. I have to admit that Typescript (and even some of the EMCA improvements) also make it more attractive.
“There are only two kinds of languages: the ones people complain about and the ones nobody uses.” —— Bjarne Stroustrup
Full Stack. Now, that's a dirty composite in some corners and rarely entirely true-- but in some cases... backend (Node) and front-end (let's say React) are not handled by two developers, but one. They might also sing the theme tune. That flexibility regardless of the fat wad of packages, is both profitable (in the short term) and valuable in the long term as a proof of concept. Who develops something and says "that's done, finished, everlasting"? It's useful to have a combined ecosystem in many cases, accessible and friendly to a single, dare I say it, "Full Stack" developer. If it needs to be made better, if it needs refactoring, everything is on the table until it doesn't make sense. If the product works great... if it needs to move away from node, fine. If you build a house that's worth looking at, nobody's thinking about the bricks, but that doesn't mean things should stay as they are.
It's not.
I work with a range of languages - go, rust, python, ruby, and yes even JavaScript. In my 15 years as an engineer most of the engineering teams tasked with a node project I've worked with enjoyed it quite a bit. Those who didn't struggled because they were still learning the more functional patterns used in the node community, and it required some relearning given the languages they came from. In my experience 99% of the time those who express a hatred for node have never programed with it, or lack experience. Now given that there are shortcomings like any tool or language. But hating it - doesn't make any sense to me unless your ignorant of it. It's a fantastic programming environment. By the way if anyone thinks that JavaScript is on the same level as PHP I invite you to visit PHP sadness.
I work with a range of languages - go, rust, python, ruby, and yes even JavaScript. In my 15 years as an engineer most of the engineering teams tasked with a node project I've worked with enjoyed it quite a bit. Those who didn't struggled because they were still learning the more functional patterns used in the node community, and it required some relearning given the languages they came from. In my experience 99% of the time those who express a hatred for node have never programed with it, or lack experience. Now given that there are shortcomings like any tool or language. But hating it - doesn't make any sense to me unless your ignorant of it. It's a fantastic programming environment. By the way if anyone thinks that JavaScript is on the same level as PHP I invite you to visit PHP sadness.
For a front end language designed in 2 weeks it is quite good. That we are stuck with it is kinda sad but its good enough.
If you design a tool (or DSL) you must tailor it to the problem it needs to solve. It must not be overly generic while still covering the entire scope. This is extremely hard and it usually takes a few versions for a language to get it right.
Then we take the DSL and implement it in an entirely different situation(????) Look, I can use my wrench to hammer in nails!
What to say? The nails are indeed going in. Massive structures are erected. They are structurally sound but it just doesn't look professional to people who are used to hammers. I'm going to be using a hammer until end of time. I tried holding the wrench over the nail but I just couldn't bring myself to hit it.
(with hammer I mean PHP)
If you design a tool (or DSL) you must tailor it to the problem it needs to solve. It must not be overly generic while still covering the entire scope. This is extremely hard and it usually takes a few versions for a language to get it right.
Then we take the DSL and implement it in an entirely different situation(????) Look, I can use my wrench to hammer in nails!
What to say? The nails are indeed going in. Massive structures are erected. They are structurally sound but it just doesn't look professional to people who are used to hammers. I'm going to be using a hammer until end of time. I tried holding the wrench over the nail but I just couldn't bring myself to hit it.
(with hammer I mean PHP)
It wasn't designed in two weeks. The initial protype for Netscape was, but that early version of JavaScript (it was called oak at the time) is far far from its modern counterpart. This is a particularly poor take as it seems you have no idea what JavaScript actually is or how it's evolved with time. If you want a purpose built DSL then find a framework, not a language runtime.
It was like mold that suddenly grew everywhere. Monopoly of JS in browsers translated into a big share of server-side pie too. People had all the options and they chose JS still, not a situation to be happy about if you ask me.
It is hated so much because it is used so much. If it was a niche or obscure platform then no-one would have cared.
IMO this argument isn't all or nothing. Sure, popular things are hated but Node is especially eggregious. There is more to it than "its just popular".
In my experience, the entire JS ecosystem does not respect robustness, stability, backwards compatibility, correctness, testability, and learning from other ecosystems. It continues to erode itself with emojis in the package manager, childish schzophrenia of frameworks, complete disregard for proven methodologies and extreme indifference to maintainability.
In my experience, the entire JS ecosystem does not respect robustness, stability, backwards compatibility, correctness, testability, and learning from other ecosystems. It continues to erode itself with emojis in the package manager, childish schzophrenia of frameworks, complete disregard for proven methodologies and extreme indifference to maintainability.
Those are people problems, not language problems. You can have a relatively stable, testable toolchain in JS.
Java is used everywhere, I'd wager it is nowhere near hated as much as node or JS in general. PHP with all its flaws is also used on the web, much more than any other language except Javascript, it too gets less hate than JS/Node.
I don't think we hang in the same bubbles. Java (pre version 8) and PHP still get a lot of hate in my dev community.
Yes, all three get hate, but I'd wager JS gets more hate than the other two. But people put up with JS because there is no choice
Maybe it is just a personal preference then. I'd take Java and PHP over Javascript any day.
Maybe it is just a personal preference then. I'd take Java and PHP over Javascript any day.
I'll take you up on that wager!
I would be very appreciated if somebody could answer me :)
First of all: 1) I'm a self-taught developer 2) I spend last year building my app on MERN stack
The problem with JavaScript technologies is that you have to add many dependencies into your project. Each module / library / framework has their own documentation which is time consuming if you are self-taught to go through it
The question really is: - Is .NET or any other framework so called "battery included" ? or I also need to add hundreds of dependencies i.e. authentication -> password hashing, jsonwebtokens etc.. - As .NET or any other framework requires more code vs Node.js -> does it pay off later on during refactoring? Means is it more productive vs any JS framework?
I'm really considering to spend next year learning C# with .NET because being solo dev it's really time consuming constantly monitor what did change and what needs to be refactored. JS stack doesn't help with maintaining the project in a long run (or I have limitted knowledge) it is really time consuming stack tbh
I agree that creating a simple CRUD app for web course it is easy but if you need to do something more advanced...
Should I start learning C# ? or .NET also require thousands of depedencies i.e. file upload (multer docs!!! Man I know them almost by heart now...)
First of all: 1) I'm a self-taught developer 2) I spend last year building my app on MERN stack
The problem with JavaScript technologies is that you have to add many dependencies into your project. Each module / library / framework has their own documentation which is time consuming if you are self-taught to go through it
The question really is: - Is .NET or any other framework so called "battery included" ? or I also need to add hundreds of dependencies i.e. authentication -> password hashing, jsonwebtokens etc.. - As .NET or any other framework requires more code vs Node.js -> does it pay off later on during refactoring? Means is it more productive vs any JS framework?
I'm really considering to spend next year learning C# with .NET because being solo dev it's really time consuming constantly monitor what did change and what needs to be refactored. JS stack doesn't help with maintaining the project in a long run (or I have limitted knowledge) it is really time consuming stack tbh
I agree that creating a simple CRUD app for web course it is easy but if you need to do something more advanced...
Should I start learning C# ? or .NET also require thousands of depedencies i.e. file upload (multer docs!!! Man I know them almost by heart now...)
I've worked in tons of different ecosystems. You still need batteries in other platforms. I'm in a .NET web project right now where no only are the core libraries out of date, and one gone out of Microsoft support, but is filled with libraries such as Newtonsoft's JSON library.
BTW, learns at least 2-3 languages in your career. This will give you a perspective many lack.
BTW, learns at least 2-3 languages in your career. This will give you a perspective many lack.
> The question really is: - Is .NET or any other framework so called "battery included" ?
Basically every other web stack is "battery included" compared to node.js. It is the only framework having this problem as far as I know. Rails, Django, the java frameworks, net etc, all of them have basically everything you need out of the box.
Basically every other web stack is "battery included" compared to node.js. It is the only framework having this problem as far as I know. Rails, Django, the java frameworks, net etc, all of them have basically everything you need out of the box.
Why did it become so popular and well adopted if that was the case?
Because a bunch of developers already knew JavaScript from frontend work, and node.js meant that they didn't have to bother learning any other languages to do backend work too.
I've only run into one person IRL who smacktalks Javascript. Then later I edited his Ruby script. And I was like "uhh... this could all be done in nodejs, or python, it really doesnt matter". He said javascript is a toy language.
Whereas... I had worked with php, python, R, and once I got to NodeJS I fell in love with it. Then picked up ReactJS
And man, so glad I went this route. I never have to apply to jobs again, given the hunger of recruiters for full stack JS devs
Whereas... I had worked with php, python, R, and once I got to NodeJS I fell in love with it. Then picked up ReactJS
And man, so glad I went this route. I never have to apply to jobs again, given the hunger of recruiters for full stack JS devs
Many people here mentioned the dependency hell in Node. Why dont the core Node developers work on improving their standard library?
Because then you lose the one real advantage of node - running the same code both server and client side. Node has to run the same javascript as browsers run in order to keep that advantage. That means having the same standard library.
So, because it's just standard javascript, to improve node's standard library you have to go through all the w3c standards processes for a new javascript / ecmascript version with your standard library improvements, then haggle with all the browser makers to get them implemented and standardised, then wait for the users to upgrade their browsers, etc etc. It's not a simple process.
So, because it's just standard javascript, to improve node's standard library you have to go through all the w3c standards processes for a new javascript / ecmascript version with your standard library improvements, then haggle with all the browser makers to get them implemented and standardised, then wait for the users to upgrade their browsers, etc etc. It's not a simple process.
A tiny project in javascript/nodejs land has a bonkers node_modules folder full of files upon files upon files. The whole ecosystem is rotten, top to bottom. I personally know many devs who have hit the eject button and now just code in Elixir. They opted out of the lunacy that is nodejs/javascript.
I think about Node.js the same way that I think about the set of wrenches I have downstairs. It is a tool that I use for specific tasks. It lets me do some things in JS that I wouldn't normally and it does it efficiently enough that I don't need to look for other tools.
I don't use it for full applications so I don't have some of the same issues that @ufmace mentions (ouch!) and those are clearly a problem.
I suspect that a lot of the hate comes from people that would like a better Node.js so they could use it but resent that it isn't available
I don't use it for full applications so I don't have some of the same issues that @ufmace mentions (ouch!) and those are clearly a problem.
I suspect that a lot of the hate comes from people that would like a better Node.js so they could use it but resent that it isn't available
Why do you think it is hated? Seems to be one of the most popular backends right now. Personally, I dislike the lack of convention and immature library ecosystem.
> Seems to be one of the most popular backends right now.
Doesn't PHP run like 70%+ of the web?
Doesn't PHP run like 70%+ of the web?
Comparably few of those are new development, most are likely click-through wordpress deployments.
> Comparably few of those are new development
Do you have any evidence of that? I've written quite a few new PHP apps in my time.
Do you have any evidence of that? I've written quite a few new PHP apps in my time.
On the question of "is it hated", Stackoverflow publishes a survey every year on interesting questions like this. It doesn't get a lot of attention here for whatever reason.
https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2021#most-loved-dr...
https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2021#most-loved-dr...
I have no personal issues with JS/Node.js except that when I was learning it there were so many different ways to create objects that it took me a while to sort out how I wanted to do it and what all the trade offs are.
I don’t like it because I don’t enjoy JS. Node itself seems great, it just needs a large standard library and mandate some form of Typescript. Even if it had those changes I’d stick to C# or take a look at Elixir.
Because it doesn't require __init__.py in every directory?
Node and JavaScript are extremely popular (used by a ton of people).
Being popular means you get a lot of criticism. Same happens to java, PHP, and any other popular language.
Being popular means you get a lot of criticism. Same happens to java, PHP, and any other popular language.
To me it's the async function coloring mess of js which made node unattractive. ( together with the import require mjs split )
It's liked and used more than it's hated.
I think this is self evident but maybe someone else will care to list some usage statistics.
I think this is self evident but maybe someone else will care to list some usage statistics.
My experience installing several tools that are built on nodejs has led me to the conclusion that I will simply not use something if it's made with nodejs. I'm not installing 127 dependencies just to get some tiny CLI tool to run. Give me any Linux tool written in Rust, Go, C, C++, Python, it always goes well and without fuss. But nodejs and ruby based software has given me nothing but headaches.
Node has a low barrier to entry(JS), and that shows in the quality of the work. If anyone remembers QBasic, it was hated for the same reasons. It's great to grasp core concepts with, but inappropriate to build something like an ERP system. It's a toy, although a powerful one.
I think it is liked quite a bit, but if I had to point out; 1) the ecosystem; it is rotten 2) people think JS is the old JS which had callback hell and other misery: there still is misery but less and with Typescript it is ok. But I think not as many hate it vs like it.
I don't think it's hated. Tons of node lovers out there :)
Node.js hated by developers cause of JavaScript, the most hated language. It's simple.
Considering its popularity, vast ecosystem, and widespread use, you can't just state that it's hated so much - that is just your impression based on few very noisy people.
>Considering its popularity, vast ecosystem, and widespread use, you can't just state that it's hated so much - that is just your impression based on few very noisy people.
I wouldn't say it's popular; it's ubiquitous. It is the only language available for development on one of the most used platforms in history: The Internet.
Also, I'd wager there's more than just a few of those very noisy people.
I wouldn't say it's popular; it's ubiquitous. It is the only language available for development on one of the most used platforms in history: The Internet.
Also, I'd wager there's more than just a few of those very noisy people.
It's ubiquitous because it is popular. If it wasn't popular, nobody would want to use, everyone would hate it, and Evil Corp Incorporated would ride in on the Savior Horse and give everyone the remedy to javascript.
But no. Instead of all that, javascript spread beyond the browser. It's in my TV (plain html/js + Wasm), on my desktop in the form of an IDE and as a VPN (at the very least the UI part of it), on SpaceX's Dragon Capsule (which itself is in Space).
JavaScript, along with HTML are the among the few of the most scrutinized and battle tested technologies ever. Billions of QAs ranging across the whole world, ranging from completely incapable users to sophisticated teams of security engineers bash at it tirelessly and without sleep. And this thing holds.
I get it, it has the shitty parts, but it also evolves, becoming better and better. And most importantly - it's one standard. No branches, no perlisms. Just one organism evolving. It's really great when you come see it through the prejudice.
But no. Instead of all that, javascript spread beyond the browser. It's in my TV (plain html/js + Wasm), on my desktop in the form of an IDE and as a VPN (at the very least the UI part of it), on SpaceX's Dragon Capsule (which itself is in Space).
JavaScript, along with HTML are the among the few of the most scrutinized and battle tested technologies ever. Billions of QAs ranging across the whole world, ranging from completely incapable users to sophisticated teams of security engineers bash at it tirelessly and without sleep. And this thing holds.
I get it, it has the shitty parts, but it also evolves, becoming better and better. And most importantly - it's one standard. No branches, no perlisms. Just one organism evolving. It's really great when you come see it through the prejudice.
Nearly no one would use a language incompatible with Chrome or Safari. Just how would Evil Corp solve that?
JavaScript spread beyond the browser because it was the only choice in the browser. Want to use the same code in the browser and anywhere else? Want maximally fungible employees? I think those choices don't pay off many times. But JavaScript is the only choice if you do.
Languages have few security vulnerabilities. JavaScript libraries and implementations have had their share.
JavaScript spread beyond the browser because it was the only choice in the browser. Want to use the same code in the browser and anywhere else? Want maximally fungible employees? I think those choices don't pay off many times. But JavaScript is the only choice if you do.
Languages have few security vulnerabilities. JavaScript libraries and implementations have had their share.
Evil Corp Inc. doesn't pay me, so i'm going to do their job - they figure it out. Chrome and Safari's existence and usage are not under a mandate by God. If Evil Corp Inc. comes up with the better everything, i'd be the first to try it out and possibly jump ship, because you have to be insane to use shitty tools where there is something far better out there, right?
Computing history is full of examples where compatibility was more important than developer happiness. And competing browser engines aren't allowed on iOS.
That would be something someone would say if they where part of a small noisy group... Scratches chin and looks up thoughtfully
I think many people feel threatened by the success and the pace of the Node.js ecosystem.
Most arguments, even in this thread already, are just wrong. Obviously they have never had any experience with the Node.js ecosystem and another.
Most arguments, even in this thread already, are just wrong. Obviously they have never had any experience with the Node.js ecosystem and another.
> Most arguments, even in this thread already, are just wrong. Obviously they have never had any experience with the Node.js ecosystem and another.
What makes them obviously wrong? To me they sound like sound arguments by people who actually use(d) it.
What makes them obviously wrong? To me they sound like sound arguments by people who actually use(d) it.
> no threads
> node does not have a concurrency and parallelism story
> standard library is tiny
Also claims like "async makes your program more difficult to reason about" without any explanation.
I hereby claim that goroutines and mutexes make your program more difficult to reason about.
> the ecosystem is an absolute dumpster fire
I am super curious which ecosystem that person would consider better.
> node does not have a concurrency and parallelism story
> standard library is tiny
Also claims like "async makes your program more difficult to reason about" without any explanation.
I hereby claim that goroutines and mutexes make your program more difficult to reason about.
> the ecosystem is an absolute dumpster fire
I am super curious which ecosystem that person would consider better.
I totally agree with you, most arguments are obsolete at best, and ignorant at worst.
> no threads
Worker threads are a thing since Node v10. Also, I like the single thread concurrency, it makes state management easier (since there is no race condition).
> node does not have a concurrency and parallelism story
You have sockets, http(s) (even http2), multiprocessing, readline, streams, timers, promises, JSON, etc...
They want String.capitalize()? They would complain about the implementation being bloated because it handles edge cases like other alphabets, etc...
> async makes your program more difficult to reason about
That may have been true with the callback hell before async/await. But now, it's just non-sense.
> the ecosystem is an absolute dumpster fire
Ironically, for an ecosystem based on the philosophy of "Don't reinvent the wheel", there are a lot of packages that does the same thing.
There is the leftpad fiasco, the colorette/nanocolors "scandal", the is-odd/is-even packages, ...
But as I said in this thread, this is not Node's fault, nor npm's fault. This is the developer's fault.
Cargo (rust), Mix (elixir), pip (python), they could all serve such an ecosystem.
It's up to the developer to be careful about his dependency tree. For example, if I need VueJS which depends on a specific library, I'll avoid installing another library doing the same thing.
> no threads
Worker threads are a thing since Node v10. Also, I like the single thread concurrency, it makes state management easier (since there is no race condition).
> node does not have a concurrency and parallelism story
- https://nodejs.dev/learn/understanding-javascript-promises
- https://nodejs.org/api/cluster.html
You have sockets, http(s) (even http2), multiprocessing, readline, streams, timers, promises, JSON, etc...
They want String.capitalize()? They would complain about the implementation being bloated because it handles edge cases like other alphabets, etc...
> async makes your program more difficult to reason about
That may have been true with the callback hell before async/await. But now, it's just non-sense.
> the ecosystem is an absolute dumpster fire
Ironically, for an ecosystem based on the philosophy of "Don't reinvent the wheel", there are a lot of packages that does the same thing.
There is the leftpad fiasco, the colorette/nanocolors "scandal", the is-odd/is-even packages, ...
But as I said in this thread, this is not Node's fault, nor npm's fault. This is the developer's fault.
Cargo (rust), Mix (elixir), pip (python), they could all serve such an ecosystem.
It's up to the developer to be careful about his dependency tree. For example, if I need VueJS which depends on a specific library, I'll avoid installing another library doing the same thing.
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For example, I have a little webapp that I built with create-react-app with typescript and redux. Very convenient overall admittedly. It's not very big, maybe 1k lines of code total, and 3 fairly minor packages added to do various things. The node_modules folder has over a thousand items in it, and takes up 350MB. The yarn.lock file alone is half a megabyte. Ahem, what the hell? At least the built artifacts are pretty small.
This might be seen as just a problem with create-react-app. But in my experience so far, pretty much everything in the Node world does this. Seriously, has anyone managed to do something useful in the Node world without ending up with a thousand packages?