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> javascript in the server wasn't "too soon", it already existed Those two things aren't necessarily in conflict. Netscape's server wasn't exactly a roaring su
by smegel 11y ago
> javascript in the server wasn't "too soon", it already existed
Those two things aren't necessarily in conflict. Netscape's server wasn't exactly a roaring success. What really made Javascript-in-the-server work was a Javascript JIT engine (v8) that actually made Javascript very competitive compared to traditional server side scripting languages. So given that there did not exist a Javascript JIT engine back then, maybe it was too soon.
- ghayes 11y agoAgree that was probably too soon, even if it existed in some form. I've often wondered why precisely people love JavaScript on the server. I would guess it's a mix of 1) event machine parallelism, 2) isomorphism, 3) speed (since V8/SpiderMonkey/Chakra), 4) cross-compatibility, and 5) engineers not needing to learn another language.
- eponeponepon 11y agoI've always assumed it's heavily weighted towards 5 - never underestimate the ability of a coder to avoid effort!
- kybernetikos 11y agoAlso, the npm ecosystem. The early js-on-the-server systems had miserable ecosystems.
- jzwinck 11y agoSpiderMonkey was around way before v8, and once it begat TraceMonkey, it had JIT. Bloomberg used this pervasively on their billion-dollar product for years before v8 was a thing--you can read that from one horse's mouth here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3984617 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3984617
- smegel 11y agoThat's quite interesting. I only mentioned v8 for the fairly obvious reason that it formed the core of the first really popular server side JS implementation, which I don't really need to name.