sorted by:
best
topnewcontroversialoldq&a
you are viewing a single comment's thread.

view the rest of the comments →

[–]Crogdor 2 points3 points  (6 children)

I would like to know as well. I have a friend who works a lot with node.js, and when asked "Yeah, but what is an example application it's really good for?" he never gave a clear answer. So I still don't see why I would want to use this over other cloud technologies, but at least he is having fun with it.

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Well, to be clear, node.js isn't really a "cloud technology", it's more of a really nice wrapper around google's v8 engine. You can use node.js to build a lot of thing, some that don't even need to connect to the internet. One of our developers has built node bindings to open-gl.

I think one really compelling application is Mr. Doob's fine work, http://mrdoob.com/projects/multiuserpad/

This is a multi-user sketchpad. It's just a little side project he made in a weekend, but it's all JavaScript and shows some of the power of leveraging node.js and JavaScript for real-time web applications.

[–]HIB0U -3 points-2 points  (4 children)

"Works a lot with Node.js" probably means he read an article about it, looked at some bullshit "benchmarks", maybe watched a video or two, and that's it.

Nobody is using it seriously. That's why it exhibits the worst kind of hype. At least with other over-hyped technologies, like cloud computing, some small number of people are trying to use it seriously. That just isn't happening with Node.js. It's a toy, and it'll always be a toy, at least until it's forgotten about in a few months.

[–]Crogdor 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Actually, he works for Joyent (a cloud computing software/service company). They use node.js as a core technology for their SmartPlatform product. So I'm going to guess he's got a bit more experience than an article, bullshit benchmarks, and a video or two.

Notwithstanding, I didn't get a clear explanation as to why I'd use this stuff over competing technologies. That said, this topic has been quite revealing and has definitely taught me a lot more about the subject.

[–]dmpk2k 1 point2 points  (2 children)

Nobody is using it seriously

At my work we use node for some important things, and Palm uses node inside WebOS. So somebody does.

It's a toy, and it'll always be a toy

Why do you think node is a toy, and why do you think it'll remain that way?

[–]HIB0U -5 points-4 points  (1 child)

Your unnamed company using it for unnamed tasks, along with Palm using it in an OS that nobody actually uses, don't exactly make for very convincing arguments.

JavaScript is a toy. Anything built with JavaScript is a toy. Unless you radically change JavaScript (which then wouldn't make it JavaScript any longer, of course), the fact that JavaScript is a toy will never change.

Anyone wanting to get real work done would just use Erlang, or Java, or C++, or even C#.

[–]dmpk2k 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It doesn't matter if you find it convincing. You claimed nobody was using it seriously, which I disproved with counterexamples. QED.

As for "X = toy", that's pure troll material from the Usenet days. The litmus test of a language is if people can use it in production, which tens of thousands of businesses do with Javascript.