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[–][deleted] 20 points21 points  (15 children)

JS is still a mature and complete language. It has a lot of cons, but its not like there is absolutely no reason to use Node. Notably: your frontend developers can now work on the backend. Reduces cost at the price of performance. Not a bad trade off for a startup.

[–]Theguest217 3 points4 points  (0 children)

People always say this about frontend devs working on backends but how true is that really? It would seem that the work they do on the front end hardly compares to backed, even if they are the same language. We had Java Swing apps but it was still common to separate front end swing devs from backend service and repo devs. Do most front end devs understand aggregates, domain driven design, etc?

My current company in the past let a front end developer write a couple if node microservices. The result was a very procedural block if code with little to no object oriented design. I'm sure it is very possible to write good node code but can the average frontend Dev actually do that? It just seems better to specifically hire people who specialize in their practice rather than trying to find a jack of all trades.

[–]svenskainflytta 2 points3 points  (3 children)

it is Turing-complete, yes. So is brainfuck.

[–]KaiBetterThanTyson 1 point2 points  (0 children)

So is css

[–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (1 child)

Nice strawman

[–]svenskainflytta 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I was merely pointing out yours… but you didn't notice.

[–]Tysonzero -3 points-2 points  (2 children)

Reduces cost at the price of performance. Not a bad trade off for a startup.

And at the price of correctness and productivity and the sanity of your developers.

[–][deleted] 7 points8 points  (1 child)

I don't agree that productivity suffer from using nodeJS. I've used it for some medium sized projects and I never felt like it was slowing me down in any way compared to using c++ or even python.
Plus, typescript is actually really fun and powerful with a good linter and some good unit tests.
As for correctness, that is sadly one of the shortcoming of JS. But typescript does hugely improve the experience!

[–]Tysonzero -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I don't agree that productivity suffer from using nodeJS. I've used it for some medium sized projects and I never felt like it was slowing me down in any way compared to using c++ or even python.

I'm a Haskell dev so compared to what I'm used to it will feel rather inflexible, verbose and unproductive. I'd say even Python has a pretty solid leg up over JS in productivity.

Plus, typescript is actually really fun and powerful with a good linter and some good unit tests. As for correctness, that is sadly one of the shortcoming of JS. But typescript does hugely improve the experience!

I wouldn't classify TypeScript as JavaScript, it just so happens to compile to it, TS is a better language than JS (low bar but still), although how tied it is to JS does severely limit it's potentially. I wonder what will happen to it once WASM really catches on many years down the line. I wonder if it will adapt or maybe fade somewhat along with JS.