5 ms·

Why in the world would you compare these two? It's apples to oranges...

sausagefeet 16y ago
How? They are both trying to solve the same problem and they take different approaches, what is unreasonable about comparing that?
- piotrSikora 16y ago
  And what problem is that exactly? Just please don't say concurrency and/or scalability, because it's huge generalization. Erlang is language for building massively distributed applications, which is achieved via message passing. Node.js is event-driven framework build on top of V8 JavaScript engine. It doesn't scale outside of single machine. I can't imagine a project, for which both: Erlang and Node.js could be considered as right tools for the same job.
  - sausagefeet 16y ago
    They are both providing a model for performing concurrent work. Erlang is quite good at writing distributed applications, but not everyone is writing distributed applications. WebMachine and Mochi both address a similar set of problems someone would want to address with Node. To argue that the problems people want to solve in Erlang and Node do not overlap is amazingly unimaginative.
    - piotrSikora 16y ago
      Yes, but now you're comparing WebMachine and Mochi to Node, which is fine...
      - sausagefeet 16y ago
        So you can imagine a project for which Node and Erlang are valid solutions? I see your argument for language vs framework, I just don't think it matters. Erlang already has a concurrency solution, and it's baked into the language. NodeJS is a solution to concurrency for a language that doesn't have one. I see comparing the two as valid because the question we are discussing how to solve the problem of performing concurrent work.
        piotrSikora 16y ago
        OK, let me put this differently. Why do people use Node.js? Because it solves concurrency issues or because it's easy to use JavaScript application server? Why do people use Erlang? Because it solves concurrency issues or because it's massively distributed and fault-tolerant system? Just look at the popular projects and communities behind those two projects :) Don't get me wrong, I agree that both solve concurrency issues, but this is just tiny part on which they overlap and I don't believe that they are meant to solve the same problems.
  - apgwoz 16y ago
    > Node.js is event-driven framework build on top of V8 JavaScript engine. It doesn't scale outside of single machine. The fact that it's built on top of the V8 JavaScript engine says nothing about anything. And the statement "it doesnt' scale outside of a single machine" is just patently false. It has support for sockets, which gives it immediately the ability to scale outside of a single machine. How do you think remote processes are communicated with/and or spawned in beam (Erlang is built on top of a virtual machine too! imagine that)? Uh, huh--sockets.

How? They are both trying to solve the same problem and they take different approaches, what is unreasonable about comparing that?

piotrSikora 16y ago
And what problem is that exactly? Just please don't say concurrency and/or scalability, because it's huge generalization. Erlang is language for building massively distributed applications, which is achieved via message passing. Node.js is event-driven framework build on top of V8 JavaScript engine. It doesn't scale outside of single machine. I can't imagine a project, for which both: Erlang and Node.js could be considered as right tools for the same job.
- sausagefeet 16y ago
  They are both providing a model for performing concurrent work. Erlang is quite good at writing distributed applications, but not everyone is writing distributed applications. WebMachine and Mochi both address a similar set of problems someone would want to address with Node. To argue that the problems people want to solve in Erlang and Node do not overlap is amazingly unimaginative.
  - piotrSikora 16y ago
    Yes, but now you're comparing WebMachine and Mochi to Node, which is fine...
    - sausagefeet 16y ago
      So you can imagine a project for which Node and Erlang are valid solutions? I see your argument for language vs framework, I just don't think it matters. Erlang already has a concurrency solution, and it's baked into the language. NodeJS is a solution to concurrency for a language that doesn't have one. I see comparing the two as valid because the question we are discussing how to solve the problem of performing concurrent work.
      - piotrSikora 16y ago
        OK, let me put this differently. Why do people use Node.js? Because it solves concurrency issues or because it's easy to use JavaScript application server? Why do people use Erlang? Because it solves concurrency issues or because it's massively distributed and fault-tolerant system? Just look at the popular projects and communities behind those two projects :) Don't get me wrong, I agree that both solve concurrency issues, but this is just tiny part on which they overlap and I don't believe that they are meant to solve the same problems.
- apgwoz 16y ago
  > Node.js is event-driven framework build on top of V8 JavaScript engine. It doesn't scale outside of single machine. The fact that it's built on top of the V8 JavaScript engine says nothing about anything. And the statement "it doesnt' scale outside of a single machine" is just patently false. It has support for sockets, which gives it immediately the ability to scale outside of a single machine. How do you think remote processes are communicated with/and or spawned in beam (Erlang is built on top of a virtual machine too! imagine that)? Uh, huh--sockets.