It honestly doesn't give me pause, since the impedance mismatch between JavaScript and backend programming is so great.

To me, the fact that Node has to add a library with custom semantics just to allow a basic 'open' on a file handle is a huge warning flag to me.

Favorite node / libc impedance mismatch is the stat() call. stat() returns an inode, which is a 64 bit integer. But JS doesn't have 64 bit integers, so it just gets rounded to the closest representable double. So node will sometimes identify two different files as the same file.

https://github.com/nodejs/node/issues/12115

>To me, the fact that Node has to add a library with custom semantics just to allow a basic 'open' on a file handle is a huge warning flag to me

What do you mean? The fs module shipped with node is pretty much just a wrapper for libc. Hell, it even links to the open(2) manpage in the docs for usage information.

What does it warn you about? Not trolling, honest question.

That JavaScript was not designed to work as a *nix (or Windows for that matter) server language. And that any attempts to make it work as a server language are going to include some major workarounds to fit that round peg into a square hole.

You can still make it work; but you can script a web page's interactions in C as well. That doesn't make it the right thing to do.

I'm not a particular fan of JavaScript on the server these days, but when you have a large number of developers who know JavaScript from the front-end world and a language ecosystem that's quite large and relatively robust, I would argue that doing those "major workarounds" (which aren't so major, really) to make server-side JavaScript an accessible option at least very closely resembles the "right thing to do".

Should we collectively eschew what's possible due to individual language gripes?

Here's my thoughts about that from a sibling thread:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15090278

TL;DR: Writing JavaScript for the browser won't really help you write good JavaScript for the server.

While I think we agree on points, I also feel like your argument is kind of an overgeneralization. There are knowledge points specific to Node, but developing good code for the browser has similar land mines (referring mainly to asynchrony here) as developing for the server. The problems that exist at the language level, and best practices, are generally applicable to both the server and the browser.

As far as libraries are concerned, it was never my experience that the landscape changed drastically from one to the other. Most of the libraries I look at/use for the front-end today advertise themselves as both for Node and for the browser.

No. We should collectively evaluate competency and correctness of a developer and language for it's best purpose as in any adequately run job interview.

> collectively evaluate competency and correctness of a developer

I'm sorry, is this a dig at Ryan Dahl, or of JavaScript/Node developers in general? I'm having trouble understanding what point you're addressing with this comment.

As for evaluating languages for their "best purpose", I think that's a very complex discussion that doesn't necessarily yield a best (or cost effective/productive) result. And certainly, as we've seen routinely evidenced, using a different language on the server is no panacea.

I'm sorry, what don't you understand? Complexity is best discussed by those who introduce it.

To be clear: I said js is misplaced on the 'server' side and is a wart in general when applied in that context. Any educated comment on these sentiments?

> what don't you understand

Exactly what I asked.

> Any educated comment on these sentiments?

Without clarity on the sentiments themselves there's not a lot to elaborate on without simply fumbling in the dark. If the concern, though, is that, in Node, you live and die by an asynchronous event loop, I'd say that's not a small footgun. I don't think that's in dispute. I'd also say that the presence of footguns doesn't, by itself, disqualify a language from being used in any particular context.

As for JavaScript being a wart, I don't really agree with that sentiment. I think that's attributable to some pretty strong and level-headed language evolution making what was once a very blunt scripting instrument into something somewhat reasonably suited to larger-scale applications.

JavaScript is objectively, demonstrably a badly-designed, error-generating language for which countless libraries, generators, and higher-level languages and frameworks such as Elm and TypeScript have been created to compensate for its shortcomings - and it most especially does not belong on the server side.

It is the poster child for the "If the only tool you have is a hammer..." maxim.

Its appeal derives almost completely from its presence in probably every major browser, where it was placed for DOM manipulation and was stressed way past its design envelope over time, leading to the increasingly dystopian web development landscape we progressively inhabit.

If it is ultimately victorious, it will be in spite of its design, not because of it. Those of us who are old enough to remember will cringe at the pain we endured over the years because of the widely used Intel 808x architecture as it evolved (small/medium/large/huge memory models, and segment registers, anyone?), not because it had the greatest merit, but because of its market penetration.

History repeats itself.

I really don't disagree on any particular point. I only take issue with the suggestion that it simply shouldn't be an option. In the past I probably would've said the same about PHP, which sits pretty squarely in the same camp as JavaScript for its "victory despite design".

All things considered, a craftsman simply uses a tool to do a job. Often it doesn't involve much fanfare. I wouldn't say that modern JavaScript is quite as blunt an instrument as a hammer, but hey, if you're good with a hammer...

Js is a scripting language that relies on the program being scripted to interact with the outside world. In browsers, this is the DOM and xhr APIs. On servers, this is the node stdlib which lets you interact with the system. The fact that this kind of modularity bothers you is bizarre.

It is a modularity that is an unnecessary point of failure compared to other choices available, and involves poor abstractions for Javascript to use things it was not intended to use.

Its been a while since I wrote and Java, but when I did you needed a page of code just to open a file.

Kotlin is slowly becoming s language that can do all of that. It's production ready for anything that uses java, js support is coming along great, and their slowly moving towards native.

The front end/back end sharing argument never appealed to me. In practice, how much are you actually going to be able to share? No way it's worth it.

What's finally got me writing way more Javascript than I'd like to is React Native. It's by far the easiest way I know of to share code between iOS and Android, it papers over a lot of Android's irritating/broken UI bits (introducing others, but overall improving the situation), and you actually can share much of your code (practically everything but the UI layer) with a web client—and even... spits... Electron. RN's performance isn't even terrible, especially compared to cross-platform mobile frameworks that have come before it (and to Electron spits)

Hopefully Webassembly will save us in another couple years, and we'll be able to do the same thing in any of several much better languages.

[EDIT] though definitely keep your sanity and use Typescript. I'd have probably jumped off a bridge by now if I were having to do all this in actual JS, of any flavor.

the front/backend sharing stuff matters more these days with server side rendered apps, but I've used nodejs plenty for this lifetime and have no plans to touch the stuff again for serious applications

It's kind of funny how you say "these days with server side rendered apps". At one time not so long ago, there were only server side rendered apps.

I think most of what you share is the effort needed to learn the language.

Also, it 'helps' if both server and client are single-threaded, because then, you can use similar solutions on both server and client (even if they sometimes aren't the most pleasant approach for solving your domain)

I hope that Web Assembly will take of and get a decent interface to the DOM, allowing developers to pick other languages in the role that JavaScript now has.

You should try. I come from a traditional Java shop, and a year ago wouldn't have thought of doing anything serious with Node JS.

Today, I do front-end React stuff as well as back-end servers with Node JS. I have been happy with it so far.

With some type-system like Flow or TypeScript, you can manage huge projects in Node JS.

I happen to like the community, CLI tools written in Node, and the plethora of open source libraries built on top of Node.

This also has a downside. Your libraries can get outdated quite fast, you would have to keep up with new language syntaxes etc., and remember which syntax is supported by which version of Node etc.

But so far, I think Node is headed in the right direction.