4 ms·

The talk by Ryan Dahl that introduced Deno to the world: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3BM9TB-8yA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3BM9TB-8yA

by est31 7y ago

kadfak 7y ago
Overview of the talk from a comment[0] of that video: > The goal of Node was event driven HTTP servers. > > 5:04 > 1 Regret: Not sticking with Promises. > * I added promises to Node in June 2009 but foolishly removed them in February 2010. > * Promises are the necessary abstraction for async/await. > * It's possible unified usage of promises in Node would have sped the delivery of the eventual standartization and async/await. > * Today Node's many async APIs are aging baldly due to this. > > 6:02 > 2 Regret: Security > * V8 by itself is a very good security sandbox > * Had I put more thought into how that could be maintained for certain applications, Node colud have had some nice security guarantees not available in any other language. > * Example: Your linter shouldn't get complete access to your computer and network. > > 7:01 > 3 Regret: The Build System (GYP) > * Build systems are very difficult and very important. > * V8 (via Chrome) started using GYP and I switched Node over in tow. > * Later Chrome dropped GYP for GN. Leaving Node the sole GYP user. > * GYP is not an ugly internal interface either - it is exposed to anyone who's trying to bind to V8. > * It's an awful experience for users. It's this non-JSON, Python adaptation of JSON. > * The continued usage of GYP is the probably largest failure of Node core. > * Instead of guiding users to write C++ bindings to V8, I should have provided a core foreign function interface (FFI) > * Many people, early on, suggested moving to an FFI (namely Cantrill) and regrettably I ignored them. > * (And I am extremely displeased that libuv adopted autotools.) > > 9:52 > 4 Regret: package.json > * Isaac, in NPM, invented package.json (for the most part) > * But I sanctioned it by allowing Nod's require() to inspect package.json files for "main" > * Ultimately I included NPM in the Node distribution, which much made it the defacto standard. > * It's unfortunate that there is centralized (privately controlled even) repository for modules. > * Allowing package.json gave rise to the concept of a "module" as a directory of files. > * This is no a strictly necessary abstraction - and one that doesn't exist on the web. > * package.json now includes all sorts of unnecessary information. License? Repository? Description? It's boilerplate noise. > * If only relative files and URLs were used when importing, the path defines the version. There is no need to list dependencies. > > 12:35 > 5 Regret: node_modules > * It massively complicates the module resolution algorithm. > * vendored-by-default has good intentions, but in practice just using $NODE_PATH wouldn't have precluded that. > * Deviates greatly from browser semantics > * It's my fault and I'm very sorry. > * Unfortunately it's impossible to undo now. > > 14:00 > 6 Regret: require("module") without the extension ".js" > * Needlessly less explicit. > * Not how browser javascript works. You cannot omit the ".js" in a script tag src attribute. > * The module loader has to query the file system at multiple locations trying to guess what the user intended. > > 14:40 > 7 Regret: index.js > * I thought it was cute, because there was index.html > * It needlessly complicated the module loading system. > * It became especially unnecessary after require supported package.json > > 15:28 Talks about Deno. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3BM9TB-8yA&lc=UgwteTb0N1PFqnr2DqB4AaABAg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3BM9TB-8yA&lc=UgwteTb0N1PFq...
- dmix 7y ago
  >> * Many people, early on, suggested moving to an FFI (namely Cantrill) and regrettably I ignored them. A bit off-topic but Dahl referenced Cantrill here, who I figured to mean one of the authors of DTrace, Bryan Cantrill, who I then found from his Twitter (https://twitter.com/bcantrill https://twitter.com/bcantrill) just last month started a new "computer company" which sounds super interesting, especially with his past experience and the passion he seems to have for attempting to solve a tough, bold problem: http://dtrace.org/blogs/bmc/ http://dtrace.org/blogs/bmc/ Edit: which apparently was posted on HN with 500+ upvotes https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21682360 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21682360, regardless it's a good read worth re-mentioning here Edit 2: Also thank you for the excellent write up, I wish every tech talk had a text TLDR
  - PudgePacket 7y ago
    For more context, Cantrill was senior at Joyent, who has Nodejs listed as one of their products on Wikipedia and has been the corporate sponsor of Nodejs for a long time.
- alpb 7y ago
  Thanks. This largely made me realize most decisions behind node.js were made on-the-fly rather arbitrarily without putting too much thought into it, and help me compare and contrast it with Go. :)
  - lowercased 7y ago
    > most decisions behind node.js were made on-the-fly rather arbitrarily without putting too much thought into it that seemed rather apparent even at the time - what's been more interesting is watching others defend some of these decisions as if there was a lot of thought put in to them, and that they're some example of great architecture. not specifically ragging on nodejs - I see this a lot in various projects - small/minor decisions compound over time, and even if they were not originally planned/intended to have significance, they have it at some point, and often people who weren't involved in the original decisions think there's a lot more 'there' there behind the original decisions, when, usually, there isn't.

The talk by Ryan Dahl that introduced Deno to the world: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3BM9TB-8yA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3BM9TB-8yA

by est31 7y ago

The talk by Ryan Dahl that introduced Deno to the world: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3BM9TB-8yA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3BM9TB-8yA

kadfak 7y ago

Overview of the talk from a comment[0] of that video: > The goal of Node was event driven HTTP servers. > > 5:04 > 1 Regret: Not sticking with Promises. > * I added promises to Node in June 2009 but foolishly removed them in February 2010. > * Promises are the necessary abstraction for async/await. > * It's possible unified usage of promises in Node would have sped the delivery of the eventual standartization and async/await. > * Today Node's many async APIs are aging baldly due to this. > > 6:02 > 2 Regret: Security > * V8 by itself is a very good security sandbox > * Had I put more thought into how that could be maintained for certain applications, Node colud have had some nice security guarantees not available in any other language. > * Example: Your linter shouldn't get complete access to your computer and network. > > 7:01 > 3 Regret: The Build System (GYP) > * Build systems are very difficult and very important. > * V8 (via Chrome) started using GYP and I switched Node over in tow. > * Later Chrome dropped GYP for GN. Leaving Node the sole GYP user. > * GYP is not an ugly internal interface either - it is exposed to anyone who's trying to bind to V8. > * It's an awful experience for users. It's this non-JSON, Python adaptation of JSON. > * The continued usage of GYP is the probably largest failure of Node core. > * Instead of guiding users to write C++ bindings to V8, I should have provided a core foreign function interface (FFI) > * Many people, early on, suggested moving to an FFI (namely Cantrill) and regrettably I ignored them. > * (And I am extremely displeased that libuv adopted autotools.) > > 9:52 > 4 Regret: package.json > * Isaac, in NPM, invented package.json (for the most part) > * But I sanctioned it by allowing Nod's require() to inspect package.json files for "main" > * Ultimately I included NPM in the Node distribution, which much made it the defacto standard. > * It's unfortunate that there is centralized (privately controlled even) repository for modules. > * Allowing package.json gave rise to the concept of a "module" as a directory of files. > * This is no a strictly necessary abstraction - and one that doesn't exist on the web. > * package.json now includes all sorts of unnecessary information. License? Repository? Description? It's boilerplate noise. > * If only relative files and URLs were used when importing, the path defines the version. There is no need to list dependencies. > > 12:35 > 5 Regret: node_modules > * It massively complicates the module resolution algorithm. > * vendored-by-default has good intentions, but in practice just using $NODE_PATH wouldn't have precluded that. > * Deviates greatly from browser semantics > * It's my fault and I'm very sorry. > * Unfortunately it's impossible to undo now. > > 14:00 > 6 Regret: require("module") without the extension ".js" > * Needlessly less explicit. > * Not how browser javascript works. You cannot omit the ".js" in a script tag src attribute. > * The module loader has to query the file system at multiple locations trying to guess what the user intended. > > 14:40 > 7 Regret: index.js > * I thought it was cute, because there was index.html > * It needlessly complicated the module loading system. > * It became especially unnecessary after require supported package.json > > 15:28 Talks about Deno. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3BM9TB-8yA&lc=UgwteTb0N1PFqnr2DqB4AaABAg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3BM9TB-8yA&lc=UgwteTb0N1PFq...

dmix 7y ago
>> * Many people, early on, suggested moving to an FFI (namely Cantrill) and regrettably I ignored them. A bit off-topic but Dahl referenced Cantrill here, who I figured to mean one of the authors of DTrace, Bryan Cantrill, who I then found from his Twitter (https://twitter.com/bcantrill https://twitter.com/bcantrill) just last month started a new "computer company" which sounds super interesting, especially with his past experience and the passion he seems to have for attempting to solve a tough, bold problem: http://dtrace.org/blogs/bmc/ http://dtrace.org/blogs/bmc/ Edit: which apparently was posted on HN with 500+ upvotes https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21682360 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21682360, regardless it's a good read worth re-mentioning here Edit 2: Also thank you for the excellent write up, I wish every tech talk had a text TLDR
- PudgePacket 7y ago
  For more context, Cantrill was senior at Joyent, who has Nodejs listed as one of their products on Wikipedia and has been the corporate sponsor of Nodejs for a long time.
alpb 7y ago
Thanks. This largely made me realize most decisions behind node.js were made on-the-fly rather arbitrarily without putting too much thought into it, and help me compare and contrast it with Go. :)
- lowercased 7y ago
  > most decisions behind node.js were made on-the-fly rather arbitrarily without putting too much thought into it that seemed rather apparent even at the time - what's been more interesting is watching others defend some of these decisions as if there was a lot of thought put in to them, and that they're some example of great architecture. not specifically ragging on nodejs - I see this a lot in various projects - small/minor decisions compound over time, and even if they were not originally planned/intended to have significance, they have it at some point, and often people who weren't involved in the original decisions think there's a lot more 'there' there behind the original decisions, when, usually, there isn't.