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It sounds like you are just trying to justify your decision for Node. I use Node and Rails in production for different products/services. They both serve diffe

It sounds like you are just trying to justify your decision for Node. I use Node and Rails in production for different products/services. They both serve different purposes well. "Going away" was said about .NET and PHP and they don't seem to be going anywhere, albeit they are less popular than they use to be. Too many discussions on HN have this paranoia lurking around of whether or not "I chose the right path". I find it unhealthy, and find that the longer life of a product exposes the weaknesses of any language/framework.

mastazi 10y ago
Language/framework fads are just that, momentary fads. I believe that, in the long term, things like good architecture, sane dependency management, well-managed life cycle (which includes provisioning and deployment) are far more important than the language/framework you are using. You may not like PHP, for example, but I would still choose to work on a good quality PHP project than a bad one in the latest flashy language/framework, any day.
- rvense 10y ago
  I don't know. I just ripped out basically half the rug under my Scala app and put in a new one without the rest even noticing. It's not a very good architecture I don't think, but because of flashy language features like generics that are often dismissed as unimportant or even an impediment "in the real world", I was able to change a core part of the code that basically everything else touches and still be sure that everything works exactly as before once the code compiles again.
  - mastazi 10y ago
    I don't want to dismiss the importance of certain language features. I'm just saying that any Turing-complete language with a reasonable ecosystem is good enough in most situations (where good enough != perfect but hey, perfection is the enemy of the good!).
vonklaus 10y ago
Again, I am not trying to justify my decision, I think if you asked most developers to give advice to a kid learning programming 3 years ago how to get started(with the benefit of 3 years glance into the future) they would probably lean towards node if it was between nodejs v ruby. However, I totally agree that the longer life of a product exposes the weaknesses of any language/framework. and there are multiple paths. Just that, if you want to get good at writing software you probably need to pick a starter language with a versatile community. People still write cobol, and wherever there is code in production, there will be demand for a language, but .NET and PHP are probably not growing in demand. I actually don't know about .NET tbh. However, there is such thing as choosing a path as, without extensive time investment, skill and knowledgebase, it would be difficult to be a truly capable python, .NET, javascript and rails dev. It would be wise to be capable in those languages, but to be a master or attempt mastery of the one most likely to embody your interests/career would likely be a better move than being able to be less than mediocre in numerous languages. I think we are largely in agreement, and I hope I didn;t mischarachterize you. I think rails is cool, and I now regret not learning it as I do like the scaffolding nature and I am sure I could pick it back up quickly, I just do not have a need to right now. Elixir looks super cool though and if I do learn a new language that is markedly different it is a toss up between Go and Elixir. I am messing around with python right now, but javascript and ruby are pretty similar, and pyton seems fairly similar. A functional language or a compiled language will be a radical departure from what I am used to.
- pjmlp 10y ago
  .NET is alive and well. Enterprise only cares about Java and .NET as standard backend stacks, regardless of the technology of the day HN posts how everyone is doing Go and node.js.
  - vonklaus 10y ago
    i actually have been interested in Java because apache has open sourced what seems to be the best collection of resources on the internet and they are almost entirely written in java for the java ecosystem. I also think I would learn a massive amount. I also am strongly considering Java and less strongly C. What are your thoughts on Java in terms of: * How much it would teach me about programming/software design, e.g. just as a general learning excercise? * What does Java lend itself best to/is a typical set of programs a beginner could build after say 1 month? * Is google planning on phasing Java out and using Go?

mastazi 10y ago

Language/framework fads are just that, momentary fads. I believe that, in the long term, things like good architecture, sane dependency management, well-managed life cycle (which includes provisioning and deployment) are far more important than the language/framework you are using. You may not like PHP, for example, but I would still choose to work on a good quality PHP project than a bad one in the latest flashy language/framework, any day.

rvense 10y ago
I don't know. I just ripped out basically half the rug under my Scala app and put in a new one without the rest even noticing. It's not a very good architecture I don't think, but because of flashy language features like generics that are often dismissed as unimportant or even an impediment "in the real world", I was able to change a core part of the code that basically everything else touches and still be sure that everything works exactly as before once the code compiles again.
- mastazi 10y ago
  I don't want to dismiss the importance of certain language features. I'm just saying that any Turing-complete language with a reasonable ecosystem is good enough in most situations (where good enough != perfect but hey, perfection is the enemy of the good!).

vonklaus 10y ago

Again, I am not trying to justify my decision, I think if you asked most developers to give advice to a kid learning programming 3 years ago how to get started(with the benefit of 3 years glance into the future) they would probably lean towards node if it was between nodejs v ruby. However, I totally agree that the longer life of a product exposes the weaknesses of any language/framework. and there are multiple paths. Just that, if you want to get good at writing software you probably need to pick a starter language with a versatile community. People still write cobol, and wherever there is code in production, there will be demand for a language, but .NET and PHP are probably not growing in demand. I actually don't know about .NET tbh. However, there is such thing as choosing a path as, without extensive time investment, skill and knowledgebase, it would be difficult to be a truly capable python, .NET, javascript and rails dev. It would be wise to be capable in those languages, but to be a master or attempt mastery of the one most likely to embody your interests/career would likely be a better move than being able to be less than mediocre in numerous languages. I think we are largely in agreement, and I hope I didn;t mischarachterize you. I think rails is cool, and I now regret not learning it as I do like the scaffolding nature and I am sure I could pick it back up quickly, I just do not have a need to right now. Elixir looks super cool though and if I do learn a new language that is markedly different it is a toss up between Go and Elixir. I am messing around with python right now, but javascript and ruby are pretty similar, and pyton seems fairly similar. A functional language or a compiled language will be a radical departure from what I am used to.

pjmlp 10y ago
.NET is alive and well. Enterprise only cares about Java and .NET as standard backend stacks, regardless of the technology of the day HN posts how everyone is doing Go and node.js.
- vonklaus 10y ago
  i actually have been interested in Java because apache has open sourced what seems to be the best collection of resources on the internet and they are almost entirely written in java for the java ecosystem. I also think I would learn a massive amount. I also am strongly considering Java and less strongly C. What are your thoughts on Java in terms of: * How much it would teach me about programming/software design, e.g. just as a general learning excercise? * What does Java lend itself best to/is a typical set of programs a beginner could build after say 1 month? * Is google planning on phasing Java out and using Go?