Re:Node.js on mozilla spidermonkey
by dspillett on Thursday April 21, 2011 @06:42AM
(#2470096)
> I always wondered why Node.js is based on V8 in the first place
Probably just a case of that engine being the one he was playing with at the time (or had some/more experience with) so it was the one his experiment that became node.js got implemented in.
A lot of implementation decisions get made this waym, especially with projects that start out as an experiment or a proof of concept for a thought experiment: if the list of reasons why not to use the tool you currently have in your hand are insignificant at the time, why mess around looking for other tools to try as well?
Sometimes this means a project gets tied to a particular tool even though another tool might offer some useful features, which is the case with the current node.js implementation. In the grand scheme of things it may not matter: is node.js suffering (or likely to suffer in future) because it is tied V8? Would making node.js flexible about its JS engine add enough overhead that it is undesirable? It is certainly worth experimenting with other JS engines though, so they have answers to those questions (maybe is isn't worth it, but now that is known for sure, and maybe it is worth it and the benefits of a change (or generalisation) can be demonstrated with real examples).
Probably just a case of that engine being the one he was playing with at the time (or had some/more experience with) so it was the one his experiment that became node.js got implemented in.
A lot of implementation decisions get made this waym, especially with projects that start out as an experiment or a proof of concept for a thought experiment: if the list of reasons why not to use the tool you currently have in your hand are insignificant at the time, why mess around looking for other tools to try as well?
Sometimes this means a project gets tied to a particular tool even though another tool might offer some useful features, which is the case with the current node.js implementation. In the grand scheme of things it may not matter: is node.js suffering (or likely to suffer in future) because it is tied V8? Would making node.js flexible about its JS engine add enough overhead that it is undesirable? It is certainly worth experimenting with other JS engines though, so they have answers to those questions (maybe is isn't worth it, but now that is known for sure, and maybe it is worth it and the benefits of a change (or generalisation) can be demonstrated with real examples).