4 ms·

This person definitely needs to try out some JVM languages like Scala, Kotlin or Groovy. They solve nearly everything he talks about while keeping the good part

by zmmmmm 8y ago

This person definitely needs to try out some JVM languages like Scala, Kotlin or Groovy. They solve nearly everything he talks about while keeping the good parts of the JVM ecosystem and avoiding a lot of the bad parts of NodeJS.

gedy 8y ago
I can't speak for the author, but I did a similar shift around 2010 to Node.js and JavaScript from many years in the Java ecosystem. I did try Groovy and quite like(d) Scala before moving to JS, and while Scala at least was a big improvement at the language level, I eventually shifted further and further in Node.js because it simply was more productive and easier to make full stack webapps. I can see developer's points if they are just "backend developers", but doing anything with a web UI is vastly superior experience and simpler in Node.js.
TheAceOfHearts 8y ago
No love for Clojure? I know many people that swear by it.
- zmmmmm 8y ago
  Oh, for sure! I just mentioned the three that first came to mind (which is biased by the fact I personally use them). But yes, I know lots of people who love Clojure.
- cryptos 8y ago
  I'm not saying that clojure is bad, but if you look at any language popularity index it is very rarely used in general.
galaxyLogic 8y ago
For a long time I worked with Java and tried to make the move to Groovy since I could appreciate what I read about it, having a background in Smalltalk. But somehow using Java for some large projects just seemed more straightforward and safe, because of type-checking which supports large-scale refactorings. But since I moved to mainly work on Node.js I feel that Node.js is what Groovy should have been. A simple but actually powerful language since EcmaScript version 6. And open.JavaScript feels open because, JavaScript is everywhere, both on the client and now with Node.js on the server too. Everybody knows it. It can not be called "niche language", like Groovy perhaps could. There is safety in numbers. What I'm looking forward to is Node.js running on GraalVM. That should make it easy to call Java libraries from within Node.js. Use JavaScript as "glue for Java" like it was originally intended. https://www.graalvm.org/docs/reference-manual/languages/js/ https://www.graalvm.org/docs/reference-manual/languages/js/
- zmmmmm 8y ago
  I agree with you about ES6 - very much in many ways it's captured the best of the syntax from languages like groovy without relaxing so much that things become ambiguous etc. Nonetheless, I find JavaScript still simply isn't structured enough and doesn't have the ability to tap into the underlying strengths of the JVM ecosystem. Static compilation has improved enormously incidentally, which to me means I almost never drop into Java any more where I used to code 50/50 in Groovy / Java. Mind you, if all you want is ES6 on the JVM, you already have a pretty good subset of it in Nashorn / JDK9. I don't know how well it can use Node libraries though ...
- vorg 8y ago
  > Use JavaScript as "glue for Java" like it was originally intended. Then we would have come full circle. JavaScript was originally intended as glue for Java applets, but applets never became popular. Instead, Java was used for standalone and server-side codebases, and Beanshell came along as glue code for those. Later, James Strachan added closures to Beanshell's basic functionality, and Apache Groovy was born. Afterwards, Scala became popular and showed that a statically-compiled language could be used dynamically as well, and Strachan said if he'd known about Scala at the time, he'd never have created Groovy. Later, Kotlin showed you could even have builders in statically-compiled code. Now Graal is finally enabling Javascript on the JVM, perhaps selling the idea to developers better than Rhino or Nashorn did.
javadocmd 8y ago
I went from Java to (dabbling in) Scala to TypeScript. While my heart is still with Scala, the ecosystem around Node is incredibly persuasive. The speed with which you can accomplish practical tasks, like building a desktop app with Electron, beats anything I've experienced in Javaland. (Of course that greatly depends on what kind of projects fill your time.) I think you could argue that the way Node hops domains -- web front-end, back-end, and desktop -- fulfills a broader version of Java's original vision: to be the cross-platform language.

by zmmmmm 8y ago

gedy 8y ago

I can't speak for the author, but I did a similar shift around 2010 to Node.js and JavaScript from many years in the Java ecosystem. I did try Groovy and quite like(d) Scala before moving to JS, and while Scala at least was a big improvement at the language level, I eventually shifted further and further in Node.js because it simply was more productive and easier to make full stack webapps. I can see developer's points if they are just "backend developers", but doing anything with a web UI is vastly superior experience and simpler in Node.js.

TheAceOfHearts 8y ago

No love for Clojure? I know many people that swear by it.

zmmmmm 8y ago
Oh, for sure! I just mentioned the three that first came to mind (which is biased by the fact I personally use them). But yes, I know lots of people who love Clojure.
cryptos 8y ago
I'm not saying that clojure is bad, but if you look at any language popularity index it is very rarely used in general.

galaxyLogic 8y ago

For a long time I worked with Java and tried to make the move to Groovy since I could appreciate what I read about it, having a background in Smalltalk. But somehow using Java for some large projects just seemed more straightforward and safe, because of type-checking which supports large-scale refactorings. But since I moved to mainly work on Node.js I feel that Node.js is what Groovy should have been. A simple but actually powerful language since EcmaScript version 6. And open.JavaScript feels open because, JavaScript is everywhere, both on the client and now with Node.js on the server too. Everybody knows it. It can not be called "niche language", like Groovy perhaps could. There is safety in numbers. What I'm looking forward to is Node.js running on GraalVM. That should make it easy to call Java libraries from within Node.js. Use JavaScript as "glue for Java" like it was originally intended. https://www.graalvm.org/docs/reference-manual/languages/js/ https://www.graalvm.org/docs/reference-manual/languages/js/

zmmmmm 8y ago
I agree with you about ES6 - very much in many ways it's captured the best of the syntax from languages like groovy without relaxing so much that things become ambiguous etc. Nonetheless, I find JavaScript still simply isn't structured enough and doesn't have the ability to tap into the underlying strengths of the JVM ecosystem. Static compilation has improved enormously incidentally, which to me means I almost never drop into Java any more where I used to code 50/50 in Groovy / Java. Mind you, if all you want is ES6 on the JVM, you already have a pretty good subset of it in Nashorn / JDK9. I don't know how well it can use Node libraries though ...
vorg 8y ago
> Use JavaScript as "glue for Java" like it was originally intended. Then we would have come full circle. JavaScript was originally intended as glue for Java applets, but applets never became popular. Instead, Java was used for standalone and server-side codebases, and Beanshell came along as glue code for those. Later, James Strachan added closures to Beanshell's basic functionality, and Apache Groovy was born. Afterwards, Scala became popular and showed that a statically-compiled language could be used dynamically as well, and Strachan said if he'd known about Scala at the time, he'd never have created Groovy. Later, Kotlin showed you could even have builders in statically-compiled code. Now Graal is finally enabling Javascript on the JVM, perhaps selling the idea to developers better than Rhino or Nashorn did.

javadocmd 8y ago

I went from Java to (dabbling in) Scala to TypeScript. While my heart is still with Scala, the ecosystem around Node is incredibly persuasive. The speed with which you can accomplish practical tasks, like building a desktop app with Electron, beats anything I've experienced in Javaland. (Of course that greatly depends on what kind of projects fill your time.) I think you could argue that the way Node hops domains -- web front-end, back-end, and desktop -- fulfills a broader version of Java's original vision: to be the cross-platform language.