Re:Systems Languages: An Experience Report
by steveklabnik on Friday July 06, 2018 @02:39PM
(#17474042)
https://www.npmjs.com/search?q=kerberos shows 26 packages. The huge ecosystem is one of the big selling points of JS!
I feel like it's a mixed bag. For every 10 packages, maybe 8 are half-baked and strapped on in a hurry with no care. That said, those other 2 are usually amazing. Java has an edge there, because there's a lot more fully supported, corporate backed, high quality packages for Java.
I recall a few years ago when some people were talking about porting an application to nodejs. The idea was dropped when it was found that there was no LDAP library that supported Kerberos SASL authentication, which was an absolute requirement for the application. (A quick look suggests that there still lacks an implementation of this).
Note that the number of packages is not a great indicator of the quality of implementation.
Library support immediately comes to mind. If I need an implementation of, say, the Kerberos protocol, I'm more likely to find a binding in Java than in JS.