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At first, but not if it made it harder to communicate in each country I visited if I was visiting those countries regularly. I think the parent is likely onto s
by adjkant 7y ago
At first, but not if it made it harder to communicate in each country I visited if I was visiting those countries regularly. I think the parent is likely onto something in that the spread of JS into backend services is not beneficial to those who spend most of their time on the backend, but it beneficial to those who don't. That's IMO creating an inherent tension.
Personally I have never understood backend JS as you get untyped, weird silent errors, under or completely un-utilized async features that end up causing more problems than they solve, and then all the quirks of JS to boot. I regularly hear the argument of the benefits of keeping the language the same on both ends, but besides slightly easier JSON between them (something handled by clean packages in almost every language these days with minimal effort/LOC/boilerplate) the languages don't end up actually sharing a ton given how you hook into a web framework like Express, database API's, etc. You don't get code reusability and I don't think the JS tradeoffs are worth the slight savings on context switching. If you have a serious project of any scale/long term use and have front end programmers that want to use JS on the backend, either bite the bullet and have them learn now or hire some backend devs in a language better suited to your project.
- z3t4 7y agoAs someone coming from web dev to back-end JS I take with me the love for instant feedback, which allows for extensive manual testing during development. And I also use automatic regression tests before pushing to prod. Node.js is infamously known to use small modules, it however gives you battle tested code run by thousand in production. I usually take a front-end first aproach, but there are also lots of people taking a backend first aproache where they rely more on static analysis, compilation, unit tests and packaging - rather then manually testing every LOC.
- theamk 7y agoInstant feedback is pretty common on backend thought? I know that at least Flask and Django in Python have it. And automated regression tests before pushing are in ever other language as well.
- z3t4 7y agoyeh, but why are there not tons of bugs in your code?
- adjkant 7y agoIs there anything you said that is specific to JS? > the love for instant feedback What languages can you not get this with? > And I also use automatic regression tests before pushing to prod. That's 100% language agnostic... > Node.js is infamously known to use small modules, it however gives you battle tested code run by thousand in production Many other languages have extensive packages pulled in, but that says nothing about how battle tested the code is unless all of the packages have high use. Python has plenty of packages with the same use level. Java has tons as well. The list goes on.
- z3t4 7y agoIn the past when people have asked me questions like those they usually knew the answers. So may I ask, Why you are asking?
- bmn__ 7y agoHe's calling you out on the wild claims in your post that are not particularly nuanced or unbiased. You shouldn't try to pull a fast one on HN readers, it won't work most of the time.