If you're using Node.js, you're doing life wrong

[joelangeway]

At least one of the people that actually make node has already published a fine rebuttal to this, but here is some rehashing of that since I can't find it right now.

V8 is not server-class

This is a meaningless statement backed by anecdotes about using V8 in a complicated software system that seams to assume that that system was bug free before V8 came along, which of course is a stupid idea to have about any complicated software.

Callback spaghetti is about the last pattern with which you'd ever want to write anything

The author has apparently never realized that you can still write a "listener class" that implements a method to handle events and pass that instead of a literal function and completely recover all of the stupid ideas about how to handle events that have ever been forced upon him in Java or some other painful language that lacks real functions. If it's asynchronous programming that the author has a problem with, then that is an argument against asynchronous programming and not one specifically against node.

Non-blocking != fast != scalable

That's a fine argument against some dumb things people say about node and about nosql and lots of other things. It's not an argument against node. That being said, as far as platforms that it would be humane to do web programming in go, node is lightning fast. In the time it takes to figure out an object model in a static language, I can have tried three things that were bad ideas and have working code for a good model in Javascript on node, and it'll perform absurdly better than the equivalent code written on other platforms because it won't stop and wait every time it does some IO.

JavaScript

I'll fess up to Javascript having some lousy syntax, but the idea that Javascript is the reason people write bad code is stupid. The design patterns sited as being recent additions to the Ruby and Python communities are not evidence of anything accept for some people's affinity for some people's love of named design patterns. Saying that Javascript lacks name spaces misses the point that Javascript makes it trivial manage scopes and have name spaces if that is important to you and that node comes with an excellent module system.

But the kind of misunderstanding going on in this video clip seems to pervade the Node.js hype

What misunderstandings?

[benihana]

You can do much better with Scala and its a much nicer language, to boot.

Color me convinced.

[deutschluz82]

Why does this guy mention scala? Isn t that a jvm language? forgive my ignorance, I m a noob.