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Ask HN: Why is Node.js hated so much?

54 points by hidden-spyder 5y ago

0x456 5y ago
My guess is because: - lots of people don't like Javascript - lots of people don't like V8 - the guy who made Node.js (Ryan Dahl) doesn't like it either - programmers think anything without thread support is a toy I like Node.js, Javascript, and Ryan Dahl, and have no strong opinions on V8.
- PaulHoule 5y ago
  It falls in an awkward place. It is dominated on the server because Java, C#, Elixir, Erlang have a concurrency and parallelism story and node doesn’t. For most scripting work it is hard to beat Python even if Python is slow. Sometimes I think compiler and tools writing for node might be fun (boy the world needs an ISO common logic implementation that isn’t hets and Haskell) but compiler and tools writing in Java is fun too, particularly in JDK 16. (Think ‘Haskell the good parts’.)
  - pixelgeek 5y ago
    > For most scripting work it is hard to beat Python even if Python is slow. Apropos of nothing... I find Python to be unreadable. I have a moderate reading issue and Python just looks like random letters to me. I actually wish I could process it as there are some very nice tools that I see people make that use Python.
    - PaulHoule 5y ago
      With Python it is about the ecosystem. Although jupyter is second only to Excel in ‘programming model not fit to purpose’ you can get it done w/ pandas, sci-kit learn, pillow, etc. Maybe I am crazy but I think it is fun writing async clientservers in Python.
  - pyrale 5y ago
    > compiler and tools writing in Java is fun too, particularly in JDK 16. (Think ‘Haskell the good parts’.) I would love a more in-depth exploration about this part of your message, if you have some time. I didn't explore the compiler/tools ecosystem for Java for some time, would love to know the advances it got that prompted your message.
    - PaulHoule 5y ago
      I just like it personally. For one thing you have the solid jvm runtime, ides that work, good performance, etc. With sealed types, var, and similar features, pattern matching, it is getting better all the time in small ways. I recently wrote a dsl in Java that lets you write a Java AST , transform it as a tree, write Java source code, compile it. It is not quite as simple as doing the same in LISP and you have to mangle names a little to unerase types, but the IDE helps you find the names.
- moralestapia 5y ago
  I know V8 from the inside out (used it as a standalone component on several of my projects) and it truly is a modern engineering marvel.
dolni 5y ago
JavaScript is a language whose flaws are well understood by experienced developers, and those flaws are massive. I also don't particularly care for "async everything" by default. It makes your program more difficult to reason about. Rather than dealing with concurrency in a subset of your application, you now have to worry about it _everywhere_. There are only a few classes of software where the async-everything approach even makes sense. Throw in the fact that the ecosystem is an absolute dumpster fire and you have more than enough justification.
- dtagames 5y ago
  An excellent answer. Although JS has problems, it did already win so Node.js is useful in that sense. But async everything is nutso and requires lots of gating and checking mechanisms in order to get back to synchronous, imperative behavior which is what you normally want in a scripting language. The setup/versioning and dependency hell issues of Node are absolutely bonkers. I work on a monrepo of 400,000 lines of code at work and I think most of the Node stuff is "just guessing" when people run it. Secret incantations that don't make any sense and have to be copy/pasted. All of Node is like this.
  - Jensson 5y ago
    > Although JS has problems, it did already win In what way did it "win"? People use JS because it is in the browser, do you have any data that JS won anywhere except the browser? Pretty sure it isn't even the most popular solution for web backends.
    - j4hdufd8 5y ago
      >Pretty sure it isn't even the most popular solution for web backends. Huh?
    - 6510 5y ago
      I never got why there is just one. The script tag can take any number of languages.
ruffrey 5y ago
Node is hated because programmers are highly opinionated (not in a negative way). Everything with huge usage gets hate, because everything has flaws and trade offs. People get forced to use it at work, sometimes to solve the wrong kinds of problems for it's strengths, which amplifies the dislike. It's the nature of the beast.
- yshklarov 5y ago
  A fair point, but don't you think it sidesteps the matter at hand? Never mind that other systems have flaws, too. What are the specific reasons that Node.js itself is hated?
  - drewcoo 5y ago
    You are reframing the question then accusing the parent of not answering your goalposts-moved scenario.
- pixelgeek 5y ago
  > Node is hated because programmers are highly opinionated (not in a negative way). And in a negative way as well :-) Ask me how I feel about php. This is, though, a very excellent point.
  - CodeGlitch 5y ago
    > Ask me how I feel about php. Negative views about PHP is completely justified :)
    - pixelgeek 5y ago
      Don't get me started.
    - linkdd 5y ago
      Fun fact: PHP stands for "People Hate Perl"
wayneftw 5y ago
It's liked and used more than it's hated. I think this is self evident but maybe someone else will care to list some usage statistics.
- betacat 5y ago
  https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2021#most-loved-dreaded-and-wanted-language-love-dread https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2021#most-loved-dr...
bithavoc 5y ago
I used to hate it, but async/await, typescrypt and ts-node makes it more acceptable nowadays.
- williamstein 5y ago
  I love node.js. I also love Python and Zig. Different tools for different jobs. Any one is really bad for some things and amazingly good at others.
tluyben2 5y ago
I think it is liked quite a bit, but if I had to point out; 1) the ecosystem; it is rotten 2) people think JS is the old JS which had callback hell and other misery: there still is misery but less and with Typescript it is ok. But I think not as many hate it vs like it.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
vince14 5y ago
I think many people feel threatened by the success and the pace of the Node.js ecosystem. Most arguments, even in this thread already, are just wrong. Obviously they have never had any experience with the Node.js ecosystem and another.
- iforgotpassword 5y ago
  > Most arguments, even in this thread already, are just wrong. Obviously they have never had any experience with the Node.js ecosystem and another. What makes them obviously wrong? To me they sound like sound arguments by people who actually use(d) it.
  - vince14 5y ago
    > no threads > node does not have a concurrency and parallelism story > standard library is tiny Also claims like "async makes your program more difficult to reason about" without any explanation. I hereby claim that goroutines and mutexes make your program more difficult to reason about. > the ecosystem is an absolute dumpster fire I am super curious which ecosystem that person would consider better.
    - linkdd 5y ago
      I totally agree with you, most arguments are obsolete at best, and ignorant at worst. > no threads Worker threads are a thing since Node v10. Also, I like the single thread concurrency, it makes state management easier (since there is no race condition). > node does not have a concurrency and parallelism story - https://nodejs.dev/learn/understanding-javascript-promises - https://nodejs.org/api/cluster.html > standard library is tiny You have sockets, http(s) (even http2), multiprocessing, readline, streams, timers, promises, JSON, etc... They want String.capitalize()? They would complain about the implementation being bloated because it handles edge cases like other alphabets, etc... > async makes your program more difficult to reason about That may have been true with the callback hell before async/await. But now, it's just non-sense. > the ecosystem is an absolute dumpster fire Ironically, for an ecosystem based on the philosophy of "Don't reinvent the wheel", there are a lot of packages that does the same thing. There is the leftpad fiasco, the colorette/nanocolors "scandal", the is-odd/is-even packages, ... But as I said in this thread, this is not Node's fault, nor npm's fault. This is the developer's fault. Cargo (rust), Mix (elixir), pip (python), they could all serve such an ecosystem. It's up to the developer to be careful about his dependency tree. For example, if I need VueJS which depends on a specific library, I'll avoid installing another library doing the same thing.
Raed667 5y ago
It is hated so much because it is used so much. If it was a niche or obscure platform then no-one would have cared.
- spectramax 5y ago
  IMO this argument isn't all or nothing. Sure, popular things are hated but Node is especially eggregious. There is more to it than "its just popular". In my experience, the entire JS ecosystem does not respect robustness, stability, backwards compatibility, correctness, testability, and learning from other ecosystems. It continues to erode itself with emojis in the package manager, childish schzophrenia of frameworks, complete disregard for proven methodologies and extreme indifference to maintainability.
  - betacat 5y ago
    Those are people problems, not language problems. You can have a relatively stable, testable toolchain in JS.
- akudha 5y ago
  Java is used everywhere, I'd wager it is nowhere near hated as much as node or JS in general. PHP with all its flaws is also used on the web, much more than any other language except Javascript, it too gets less hate than JS/Node.
  - Raed667 5y ago
    I don't think we hang in the same bubbles. Java (pre version 8) and PHP still get a lot of hate in my dev community.
    - akudha 5y ago
      Yes, all three get hate, but I'd wager JS gets more hate than the other two. But people put up with JS because there is no choice Maybe it is just a personal preference then. I'd take Java and PHP over Javascript any day.
dyeje 5y ago
Why do you think it is hated? Seems to be one of the most popular backends right now. Personally, I dislike the lack of convention and immature library ecosystem.
- withinboredom 5y ago
  > Seems to be one of the most popular backends right now. Doesn't PHP run like 70%+ of the web?
  - isbvhodnvemrwvn 5y ago
    Comparably few of those are new development, most are likely click-through wordpress deployments.
    - withinboredom 5y ago
      > Comparably few of those are new development Do you have any evidence of that? I've written quite a few new PHP apps in my time.
ufmace 5y ago
Probably the worst thing is that the standard library with Node Javascript is tiny. Therefore, you have to pull in a pile of NPM packages to do pretty much anything. The package ecosystem is rather messy for the same reason - there's a mountain of tiny packages doing a few little things because somebody needed to do just a few things and didn't want to pull in some massive library that does a ton of stuff including the thing they need to do. Which then leads to a lot of bigger and more useful packages having huge dependency trees of tons of little packages, all at poorly-managed versions that usually can't be shared with any other big packages. So a program that needs, say, 3 major packages to do something useful might end up with thousands of dependencies taking up hundreds of megabytes, often with 3+ copies of the same package at different versions. For example, I have a little webapp that I built with create-react-app with typescript and redux. Very convenient overall admittedly. It's not very big, maybe 1k lines of code total, and 3 fairly minor packages added to do various things. The node_modules folder has over a thousand items in it, and takes up 350MB. The yarn.lock file alone is half a megabyte. Ahem, what the hell? At least the built artifacts are pretty small. This might be seen as just a problem with create-react-app. But in my experience so far, pretty much everything in the Node world does this. Seriously, has anyone managed to do something useful in the Node world without ending up with a thousand packages?
- dvcrn 5y ago
  Small composable packages aren’t a bad thing IMO. It’s nice to pull things together how you want without having to reimplement the same logic multiple times. Just encapsulate smaller bits of useful code into their own mini packages Like if there’s some string manipulation thing I need, instead of copy pasting some snippet, I can pull in the micro package that already does this
  - hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
    The thing is, many other modern ecosystems have these included. You don't need a pile of dependences because you are guaranteed to have the functionality you need. Of course you will still need modules for more specific things but since the most often used functionality is already there you end up with ten packages, not a hundred or more.
clipradiowallet 5y ago
Node has a low barrier to entry(JS), and that shows in the quality of the work. If anyone remembers QBasic, it was hated for the same reasons. It's great to grasp core concepts with, but inappropriate to build something like an ERP system. It's a toy, although a powerful one.
ochronus 5y ago
I don't think it's hated. Tons of node lovers out there :)
lvl100 5y ago
I don’t think it’s Node that people don’t like. It’s more the ecosystem and developers around it. An example would be people focusing more on branding and landing pages.
- krapp 5y ago
  I don't like Node, either. Having one company and one package manager entirely control a formerly open and decentralized programming language ecosystem is a regressive step from what we had before. I also don't believe Javascript should be used as a general purpose programming language outside of the browser. I don't hate JS, but it's a very flawed language designed for a specific, niche purpose and the amount of effort put into making it "enterprise worthy" (which seems to fail spectacularly and publicly just about every week or so, in ways no other language has to deal with) is the reason the JS ecosystem is a such Lovecraftian horrorshow.
sto_hristo 5y ago
Considering its popularity, vast ecosystem, and widespread use, you can't just state that it's hated so much - that is just your impression based on few very noisy people.
- Nicksil 5y ago
  >Considering its popularity, vast ecosystem, and widespread use, you can't just state that it's hated so much - that is just your impression based on few very noisy people. I wouldn't say it's popular; it's ubiquitous. It is the only language available for development on one of the most used platforms in history: The Internet. Also, I'd wager there's more than just a few of those very noisy people.
  - RobertWHurst 5y ago
    That would be something someone would say if they where part of a small noisy group... Scratches chin and looks up thoughtfully
  - sto_hristo 5y ago
    It's ubiquitous because it is popular. If it wasn't popular, nobody would want to use, everyone would hate it, and Evil Corp Incorporated would ride in on the Savior Horse and give everyone the remedy to javascript. But no. Instead of all that, javascript spread beyond the browser. It's in my TV (plain html/js + Wasm), on my desktop in the form of an IDE and as a VPN (at the very least the UI part of it), on SpaceX's Dragon Capsule (which itself is in Space). JavaScript, along with HTML are the among the few of the most scrutinized and battle tested technologies ever. Billions of QAs ranging across the whole world, ranging from completely incapable users to sophisticated teams of security engineers bash at it tirelessly and without sleep. And this thing holds. I get it, it has the shitty parts, but it also evolves, becoming better and better. And most importantly - it's one standard. No branches, no perlisms. Just one organism evolving. It's really great when you come see it through the prejudice.
    - pseudalopex 5y ago
bdcravens 5y ago
Being heavily coupled to the front-end. There's a perceived attitude that many Node devs are just front-end devs with enough back-end knowledge to be dangerous. With this is the overloading of the term "full stack". The early perceived coupling with MongoDB didn't help.
recursivedoubts 5y ago
Because of this: https://i.redd.it/h7nt4keyd7oy.jpg https://i.redd.it/h7nt4keyd7oy.jpg I remember back in the late 2000's/early 2010s, there was a blogger, I think at google, who claimed that "the next programming language has already been chosen for you". In retrospect, he was clearly talking about javascript, which got a tremendous push from the big tech players despite all its obvious problems. Now we are stuck with a mess of code written in an ugly language. Why the big guys picked javascript, I don't know. Maybe to ensure that everyone was so bogged down in dependencies, language incompatibilities and callback hell that no competitors would arise? EDIT: It was Steve Yeggie, back in 2007: https://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2007/02/next-big-language.html https://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2007/02/next-big-language.h...
- antisol 5y ago
  Haha, nice link. Yeah, pretty much this. I'd expand on it to answer the original question more fully from my perspective: I don't actually hate node.js per se. I'm sure it's a very good javascript environment. For me, the problem is a fundamental one: you're choosing to write javascript somewhere where you don't have to be writing javascript. I disagree on principle with doing that: friends don't let friends choose js. For me, any technical merits of the implementation and the benefits of running the same code on both server and client sides aren't important - IMO you're better off to just use a good language instead, only using as much js as is absolutely necessary. I literally don't think I've ever seen anybody try to argue that js is a good language. I can't conceive of anybody trying to argue that such a pitiful standard library is a good idea. Why in god's name would you choose to use it server side when you could be writing something less excruciating like perl or php or assembler or brainfuck? > Why the big guys picked javascript, I don't know. To be fair, they never really picked it per se, it was just the only thing that was kinda-sorta standardised enough that you could write code and kinda-sorta-almost get it to run on most browsers without installing some horrible plug-in. I think a more appropriate question is why it never got replaced with something not-awful.
- switch007 5y ago
  The larger book covers things like scripting CSS and SVGs and goes in to exhaustive detail about the language. If you subtract the smaller from the larger the resulting set is not “bad parts of JavaScript “ One person’s opinion of Python’s good parts would be equally small and any opinion would be very small compared it to the entire official documentation.
drbojingle 5y ago
I have no personal issues with JS/Node.js except that when I was learning it there were so many different ways to create objects that it took me a while to sort out how I wanted to do it and what all the trade offs are.
bob1029 5y ago
For me, it's less an equation of active hate. I can actually see why some people like it, and I wouldn't want to get in anyone's way on that. That said, I have found that the .NET ecosystem is an agreeable way to build the kind of software I need to build. I don't think my product would be infeasible in a Node.JS ecosystem, but it would certainly be more painful for reasons that are specific to our problem domain. If I had to take a shot across the proverbial HN language war deck, I would say that dependency management is the biggest reason I would prefer to avoid Node.JS on future projects. I have a very complex .NET code base which uses 3rd party dependencies you can count on one hand. Our customers really enjoy that kind of thing.
farleykr 5y ago
Can’t remember where I first heard this but I think it applies here: There are two kinds of programming languages. Those people complain about and those no one uses. EDIT: To add a more constructive comment: Don’t worry too much when people hate on a given language and don’t try to make a decision based on what tool or language people are complaining about. Every tool has its usefulness and its drawbacks.
- mbrodersen 5y ago
  I think you are quoting Bjarne Stroustrup (C++ creator).
smoyer 5y ago
I don't hate node, I just realized that on the server-side, by the time I added enough modules to make something work I could get better performance from a Jakarta EE application server and write far less code. Go's standard library comes with a lot of the same batteries built in and while I write more code in Go, the compiled binary is small (good for container management) and I use less dependencies. So that last sentence is the key. When I was writing a lot of Java, I learned to curate my dependency graph carefully. When writing in Go, I've become even more careful to only use widely-adopted packages though I'm a bit more lenient with test-only package. I've predominately stopped using Node.js because it's dependency graph is simply unmanageable. Node.js itself provides a facade of multiprocessing as well as other niceties you'd expect to find on the server-side but to do anything substantial you either need to code it yourself or you adopt a huge dependency tree. Downstream security vulnerabilities and bugs mean you're continuously updating versions and it's not always pretty. Now that I've adopted the write a bit more code and use fewer dependencies mentality, perhaps I should try another project in Node.js. I have to admit that Typescript (and even some of the EMCA improvements) also make it more attractive.
xaduha 5y ago
It was like mold that suddenly grew everywhere. Monopoly of JS in browsers translated into a big share of server-side pie too. People had all the options and they chose JS still, not a situation to be happy about if you ask me.
muglug 5y ago
“There are only two kinds of languages: the ones people complain about and the ones nobody uses.” —— Bjarne Stroustrup
dsego 5y ago
Because it doesn't require __init__.py in every directory?
6510 5y ago
For a front end language designed in 2 weeks it is quite good. That we are stuck with it is kinda sad but its good enough. If you design a tool (or DSL) you must tailor it to the problem it needs to solve. It must not be overly generic while still covering the entire scope. This is extremely hard and it usually takes a few versions for a language to get it right. Then we take the DSL and implement it in an entirely different situation(????) Look, I can use my wrench to hammer in nails! What to say? The nails are indeed going in. Massive structures are erected. They are structurally sound but it just doesn't look professional to people who are used to hammers. I'm going to be using a hammer until end of time. I tried holding the wrench over the nail but I just couldn't bring myself to hit it. (with hammer I mean PHP)
- RobertWHurst 5y ago
  It wasn't designed in two weeks. The initial protype for Netscape was, but that early version of JavaScript (it was called oak at the time) is far far from its modern counterpart. This is a particularly poor take as it seems you have no idea what JavaScript actually is or how it's evolved with time. If you want a purpose built DSL then find a framework, not a language runtime.
0x456 5y ago
On the question of "is it hated", Stackoverflow publishes a survey every year on interesting questions like this. It doesn't get a lot of attention here for whatever reason. https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2021#most-loved-dreaded-and-wanted-language-love-dread https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2021#most-loved-dr...
pixelgeek 5y ago
I think about Node.js the same way that I think about the set of wrenches I have downstairs. It is a tool that I use for specific tasks. It lets me do some things in JS that I wouldn't normally and it does it efficiently enough that I don't need to look for other tools. I don't use it for full applications so I don't have some of the same issues that @ufmace mentions (ouch!) and those are clearly a problem. I suspect that a lot of the hate comes from people that would like a better Node.js so they could use it but resent that it isn't available
jmknoll 5y ago
Something that I don't see mentioned here, but which I believe drives a lot of the controversy around Node, is that it takes an extremely unopinionated approach to web development. That is, Node.js out of the box is really just a javascript runtime. You need a package to serve html, you need to decide on an application architecture and organizational structure, you need to choose an ORM. You need to make a lot of decisions that other web frameworks like Django or Rails just make for you when you build a project. The lack of opinionated defaults has some benefits: - It gives you a ton of flexibility - It makes it easy to learn the framework, since there's no magic. - It forces the team to really understand what the application does from first principles, again since there is no magic. The other side of this coin is that flexibility often leads to architectural chaos, and working with Node can feel very slow, since you're constantly reinventing the wheel. The reality is that 80% of the things I'm building basically just need some variety of MVC with a reliable and predictable way to connect to a SQL database, and Node doesn't feel like the right tool for that job.
- loginx 5y ago
  I think you're not seeing it mentioned here because this is comparing apples to oranges. Node is not a web development platform, it literally IS only a runtime. Rather than comparing with Django or Rails, one should instead compare it to Python and Ruby. There are several server side web framework for NodeJS also (Meteor, Sails, Express). It's possible you may have confused Node with Express, as I see that happening very frequently, but Node is used for all sorts of other workloads like desktop apps, microservices, and other general computing tasks.
  - cutler 5y ago
    Comparing Node with Ruby and Python is still apples to oranges. The nearest equivalent would be comparing Node with Rack (Ruby) or WSGI (Python).
sergiotapia 5y ago
A tiny project in javascript/nodejs land has a bonkers node_modules folder full of files upon files upon files. The whole ecosystem is rotten, top to bottom. I personally know many devs who have hit the eject button and now just code in Elixir. They opted out of the lunacy that is nodejs/javascript.
BuckRogers 5y ago
I don’t like it because I don’t enjoy JS. Node itself seems great, it just needs a large standard library and mandate some form of Typescript. Even if it had those changes I’d stick to C# or take a look at Elixir.
vesuvianvenus 5y ago
I've only run into one person IRL who smacktalks Javascript. Then later I edited his Ruby script. And I was like "uhh... this could all be done in nodejs, or python, it really doesnt matter". He said javascript is a toy language. Whereas... I had worked with php, python, R, and once I got to NodeJS I fell in love with it. Then picked up ReactJS And man, so glad I went this route. I never have to apply to jobs again, given the hunger of recruiters for full stack JS devs
gtirloni 5y ago
Many people here mentioned the dependency hell in Node. Why dont the core Node developers work on improving their standard library?
- antisol 5y ago
  Because then you lose the one real advantage of node - running the same code both server and client side. Node has to run the same javascript as browsers run in order to keep that advantage. That means having the same standard library. So, because it's just standard javascript, to improve node's standard library you have to go through all the w3c standards processes for a new javascript / ecmascript version with your standard library improvements, then haggle with all the browser makers to get them implemented and standardised, then wait for the users to upgrade their browsers, etc etc. It's not a simple process.
Pabblo001 5y ago
I would be very appreciated if somebody could answer me :) First of all: 1) I'm a self-taught developer 2) I spend last year building my app on MERN stack The problem with JavaScript technologies is that you have to add many dependencies into your project. Each module / library / framework has their own documentation which is time consuming if you are self-taught to go through it The question really is: - Is .NET or any other framework so called "battery included" ? or I also need to add hundreds of dependencies i.e. authentication -> password hashing, jsonwebtokens etc.. - As .NET or any other framework requires more code vs Node.js -> does it pay off later on during refactoring? Means is it more productive vs any JS framework? I'm really considering to spend next year learning C# with .NET because being solo dev it's really time consuming constantly monitor what did change and what needs to be refactored. JS stack doesn't help with maintaining the project in a long run (or I have limitted knowledge) it is really time consuming stack tbh I agree that creating a simple CRUD app for web course it is easy but if you need to do something more advanced... Should I start learning C# ? or .NET also require thousands of depedencies i.e. file upload (multer docs!!! Man I know them almost by heart now...)
- Jensson 5y ago
  > The question really is: - Is .NET or any other framework so called "battery included" ? Basically every other web stack is "battery included" compared to node.js. It is the only framework having this problem as far as I know. Rails, Django, the java frameworks, net etc, all of them have basically everything you need out of the box.
  - hidden-spyder 5y ago
    Why did it become so popular and well adopted if that was the case?
    - josephcsible 5y ago
      Because a bunch of developers already knew JavaScript from frontend work, and node.js meant that they didn't have to bother learning any other languages to do backend work too.
swman 5y ago
It’s hated by people who have either never bothered with it and are on the JS hate train, or it’s hated by people who had to deal with poorly executed code. If you know the use case fits, then it’s great and will help you scale fast at minimal cost. However that takes a bit of experience to understand/implement. It has some flaws sure, but unless you’re going out of your way to use poor practices or using node for a task it isn’t great for, that’s kinda on you right? Used node for many things, including services currently in use by many millions of users. It’s just a tool in the toolbox, so use it like one where it makes sense.
jgb1984 5y ago
My experience installing several tools that are built on nodejs has led me to the conclusion that I will simply not use something if it's made with nodejs. I'm not installing 127 dependencies just to get some tiny CLI tool to run. Give me any Linux tool written in Rust, Go, C, C++, Python, it always goes well and without fuss. But nodejs and ruby based software has given me nothing but headaches.
craftoman 5y ago
Node.js hated by developers cause of JavaScript, the most hated language. It's simple.
singularity2001 5y ago
To me it's the async function coloring mess of js which made node unattractive. ( together with the import require mjs split )
midrus 5y ago
Node and JavaScript are extremely popular (used by a ton of people). Being popular means you get a lot of criticism. Same happens to java, PHP, and any other popular language.
dogberry 5y ago
Full Stack. Now, that's a dirty composite in some corners and rarely entirely true-- but in some cases... backend (Node) and front-end (let's say React) are not handled by two developers, but one. They might also sing the theme tune. That flexibility regardless of the fat wad of packages, is both profitable (in the short term) and valuable in the long term as a proof of concept. Who develops something and says "that's done, finished, everlasting"? It's useful to have a combined ecosystem in many cases, accessible and friendly to a single, dare I say it, "Full Stack" developer. If it needs to be made better, if it needs refactoring, everything is on the table until it doesn't make sense. If the product works great... if it needs to move away from node, fine. If you build a house that's worth looking at, nobody's thinking about the bricks, but that doesn't mean things should stay as they are.
The-Brent 5y ago
Here's the thing. JS does not suck. Node does not suck. They exist and are widely used precisely because they do not suck and deliver many advantages that are preferred by many developers over alternatives. I hate Python and could go on all day about what's wrong with it, but it doesn't suck. I use it when it is appropriate for the task at hand, but find it is rarely the best language for the job - given what I know and what I prefer. Most people that hate a language also avoid it and, therefore, tend to not have made their peace with its shortcomings, so don't have an honest reckoning. It is unfair to completely disparage a language until you have fully figured out how to understand and work with it, warts and all. Frankly, until then, you aren't yet informed enough to make a summary judgement. You are just cherry-picking your dislikes. I have rarely heard a criticism that did anything but highlight the critic's lack of knowledge. For example, there is a common criticism about the lack of a standard library. Well, that is how the ES or Node ecosystems are structured. It is not a flaw - it is just a different approach. If you work intelligently within that paradigm, it is actually quite nice. If you hold onto your expectation that a standard library is a part of any respectable ecosystem, you're going to be perpetually dissatisfied with ES/Node. It may not be what you like or expect, but it is not inherently wrong or lacking. Parenthetically, anyone who makes the standard library complaint about Node just doesn't know Node. It has a very complete set of functionality natively, for its purpose. It is not going to offer much in the way of math operations, sorting algorithms, etc. That is not its purpose. If you want those things, you can add them. If you think that a given dependency is too big, too small, incomplete, or poorly managed, write your own, and publish it like many have done. But be warned - if it gets popular, there will be no end of complaints about what's wrong with your library because ... well ... it is actually developers who suck. We have opinions and are quick to convince ourselves that those opinions are fact and anyone who disagrees is not as smart as we are.
RobertWHurst 5y ago
It's not. I work with a range of languages - go, rust, python, ruby, and yes even JavaScript. In my 15 years as an engineer most of the engineering teams tasked with a node project I've worked with enjoyed it quite a bit. Those who didn't struggled because they were still learning the more functional patterns used in the node community, and it required some relearning given the languages they came from. In my experience 99% of the time those who express a hatred for node have never programed with it, or lack experience. Now given that there are shortcomings like any tool or language. But hating it - doesn't make any sense to me unless your ignorant of it. It's a fantastic programming environment. By the way if anyone thinks that JavaScript is on the same level as PHP I invite you to visit PHP sadness.

54 points by hidden-spyder 5y ago

My guess is because: - lots of people don't like Javascript - lots of people don't like V8 - the guy who made Node.js (Ryan Dahl) doesn't like it either - programmers think anything without thread support is a toy I like Node.js, Javascript, and Ryan Dahl, and have no strong opinions on V8.

PaulHoule 5y ago
It falls in an awkward place. It is dominated on the server because Java, C#, Elixir, Erlang have a concurrency and parallelism story and node doesn’t. For most scripting work it is hard to beat Python even if Python is slow. Sometimes I think compiler and tools writing for node might be fun (boy the world needs an ISO common logic implementation that isn’t hets and Haskell) but compiler and tools writing in Java is fun too, particularly in JDK 16. (Think ‘Haskell the good parts’.)
- pixelgeek 5y ago
  > For most scripting work it is hard to beat Python even if Python is slow. Apropos of nothing... I find Python to be unreadable. I have a moderate reading issue and Python just looks like random letters to me. I actually wish I could process it as there are some very nice tools that I see people make that use Python.
  - PaulHoule 5y ago
    With Python it is about the ecosystem. Although jupyter is second only to Excel in ‘programming model not fit to purpose’ you can get it done w/ pandas, sci-kit learn, pillow, etc. Maybe I am crazy but I think it is fun writing async clientservers in Python.
- pyrale 5y ago
  > compiler and tools writing in Java is fun too, particularly in JDK 16. (Think ‘Haskell the good parts’.) I would love a more in-depth exploration about this part of your message, if you have some time. I didn't explore the compiler/tools ecosystem for Java for some time, would love to know the advances it got that prompted your message.
  - PaulHoule 5y ago
    I just like it personally. For one thing you have the solid jvm runtime, ides that work, good performance, etc. With sealed types, var, and similar features, pattern matching, it is getting better all the time in small ways. I recently wrote a dsl in Java that lets you write a Java AST , transform it as a tree, write Java source code, compile it. It is not quite as simple as doing the same in LISP and you have to mangle names a little to unerase types, but the IDE helps you find the names.
moralestapia 5y ago
I know V8 from the inside out (used it as a standalone component on several of my projects) and it truly is a modern engineering marvel.

dolni 5y ago

JavaScript is a language whose flaws are well understood by experienced developers, and those flaws are massive. I also don't particularly care for "async everything" by default. It makes your program more difficult to reason about. Rather than dealing with concurrency in a subset of your application, you now have to worry about it _everywhere_. There are only a few classes of software where the async-everything approach even makes sense. Throw in the fact that the ecosystem is an absolute dumpster fire and you have more than enough justification.

dtagames 5y ago
An excellent answer. Although JS has problems, it did already win so Node.js is useful in that sense. But async everything is nutso and requires lots of gating and checking mechanisms in order to get back to synchronous, imperative behavior which is what you normally want in a scripting language. The setup/versioning and dependency hell issues of Node are absolutely bonkers. I work on a monrepo of 400,000 lines of code at work and I think most of the Node stuff is "just guessing" when people run it. Secret incantations that don't make any sense and have to be copy/pasted. All of Node is like this.
- Jensson 5y ago
  > Although JS has problems, it did already win In what way did it "win"? People use JS because it is in the browser, do you have any data that JS won anywhere except the browser? Pretty sure it isn't even the most popular solution for web backends.
  - j4hdufd8 5y ago
    >Pretty sure it isn't even the most popular solution for web backends. Huh?
  - 6510 5y ago
    I never got why there is just one. The script tag can take any number of languages.

ruffrey 5y ago

Node is hated because programmers are highly opinionated (not in a negative way). Everything with huge usage gets hate, because everything has flaws and trade offs. People get forced to use it at work, sometimes to solve the wrong kinds of problems for it's strengths, which amplifies the dislike. It's the nature of the beast.

yshklarov 5y ago
A fair point, but don't you think it sidesteps the matter at hand? Never mind that other systems have flaws, too. What are the specific reasons that Node.js itself is hated?
- drewcoo 5y ago
  You are reframing the question then accusing the parent of not answering your goalposts-moved scenario.
pixelgeek 5y ago
> Node is hated because programmers are highly opinionated (not in a negative way). And in a negative way as well :-) Ask me how I feel about php. This is, though, a very excellent point.
- CodeGlitch 5y ago
  > Ask me how I feel about php. Negative views about PHP is completely justified :)
  - pixelgeek 5y ago
    Don't get me started.
  - linkdd 5y ago
    Fun fact: PHP stands for "People Hate Perl"

wayneftw 5y ago

It's liked and used more than it's hated. I think this is self evident but maybe someone else will care to list some usage statistics.

betacat 5y ago
https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2021#most-loved-dreaded-and-wanted-language-love-dread https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2021#most-loved-dr...

bithavoc 5y ago

I used to hate it, but async/await, typescrypt and ts-node makes it more acceptable nowadays.

williamstein 5y ago
I love node.js. I also love Python and Zig. Different tools for different jobs. Any one is really bad for some things and amazingly good at others.

tluyben2 5y ago

I think it is liked quite a bit, but if I had to point out; 1) the ecosystem; it is rotten 2) people think JS is the old JS which had callback hell and other misery: there still is misery but less and with Typescript it is ok. But I think not as many hate it vs like it.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

vince14 5y ago

I think many people feel threatened by the success and the pace of the Node.js ecosystem. Most arguments, even in this thread already, are just wrong. Obviously they have never had any experience with the Node.js ecosystem and another.

iforgotpassword 5y ago
> Most arguments, even in this thread already, are just wrong. Obviously they have never had any experience with the Node.js ecosystem and another. What makes them obviously wrong? To me they sound like sound arguments by people who actually use(d) it.
- vince14 5y ago
  > no threads > node does not have a concurrency and parallelism story > standard library is tiny Also claims like "async makes your program more difficult to reason about" without any explanation. I hereby claim that goroutines and mutexes make your program more difficult to reason about. > the ecosystem is an absolute dumpster fire I am super curious which ecosystem that person would consider better.
  - linkdd 5y ago
    I totally agree with you, most arguments are obsolete at best, and ignorant at worst. > no threads Worker threads are a thing since Node v10. Also, I like the single thread concurrency, it makes state management easier (since there is no race condition). > node does not have a concurrency and parallelism story - https://nodejs.dev/learn/understanding-javascript-promises - https://nodejs.org/api/cluster.html > standard library is tiny You have sockets, http(s) (even http2), multiprocessing, readline, streams, timers, promises, JSON, etc... They want String.capitalize()? They would complain about the implementation being bloated because it handles edge cases like other alphabets, etc... > async makes your program more difficult to reason about That may have been true with the callback hell before async/await. But now, it's just non-sense. > the ecosystem is an absolute dumpster fire Ironically, for an ecosystem based on the philosophy of "Don't reinvent the wheel", there are a lot of packages that does the same thing. There is the leftpad fiasco, the colorette/nanocolors "scandal", the is-odd/is-even packages, ... But as I said in this thread, this is not Node's fault, nor npm's fault. This is the developer's fault. Cargo (rust), Mix (elixir), pip (python), they could all serve such an ecosystem. It's up to the developer to be careful about his dependency tree. For example, if I need VueJS which depends on a specific library, I'll avoid installing another library doing the same thing.

Raed667 5y ago

It is hated so much because it is used so much. If it was a niche or obscure platform then no-one would have cared.

spectramax 5y ago
IMO this argument isn't all or nothing. Sure, popular things are hated but Node is especially eggregious. There is more to it than "its just popular". In my experience, the entire JS ecosystem does not respect robustness, stability, backwards compatibility, correctness, testability, and learning from other ecosystems. It continues to erode itself with emojis in the package manager, childish schzophrenia of frameworks, complete disregard for proven methodologies and extreme indifference to maintainability.
- betacat 5y ago
  Those are people problems, not language problems. You can have a relatively stable, testable toolchain in JS.
akudha 5y ago
Java is used everywhere, I'd wager it is nowhere near hated as much as node or JS in general. PHP with all its flaws is also used on the web, much more than any other language except Javascript, it too gets less hate than JS/Node.
- Raed667 5y ago
  I don't think we hang in the same bubbles. Java (pre version 8) and PHP still get a lot of hate in my dev community.
  - akudha 5y ago
    Yes, all three get hate, but I'd wager JS gets more hate than the other two. But people put up with JS because there is no choice Maybe it is just a personal preference then. I'd take Java and PHP over Javascript any day.

dyeje 5y ago

Why do you think it is hated? Seems to be one of the most popular backends right now. Personally, I dislike the lack of convention and immature library ecosystem.

withinboredom 5y ago
> Seems to be one of the most popular backends right now. Doesn't PHP run like 70%+ of the web?
- isbvhodnvemrwvn 5y ago
  Comparably few of those are new development, most are likely click-through wordpress deployments.
  - withinboredom 5y ago
    > Comparably few of those are new development Do you have any evidence of that? I've written quite a few new PHP apps in my time.

ufmace 5y ago

Probably the worst thing is that the standard library with Node Javascript is tiny. Therefore, you have to pull in a pile of NPM packages to do pretty much anything. The package ecosystem is rather messy for the same reason - there's a mountain of tiny packages doing a few little things because somebody needed to do just a few things and didn't want to pull in some massive library that does a ton of stuff including the thing they need to do. Which then leads to a lot of bigger and more useful packages having huge dependency trees of tons of little packages, all at poorly-managed versions that usually can't be shared with any other big packages. So a program that needs, say, 3 major packages to do something useful might end up with thousands of dependencies taking up hundreds of megabytes, often with 3+ copies of the same package at different versions. For example, I have a little webapp that I built with create-react-app with typescript and redux. Very convenient overall admittedly. It's not very big, maybe 1k lines of code total, and 3 fairly minor packages added to do various things. The node_modules folder has over a thousand items in it, and takes up 350MB. The yarn.lock file alone is half a megabyte. Ahem, what the hell? At least the built artifacts are pretty small. This might be seen as just a problem with create-react-app. But in my experience so far, pretty much everything in the Node world does this. Seriously, has anyone managed to do something useful in the Node world without ending up with a thousand packages?

dvcrn 5y ago
Small composable packages aren’t a bad thing IMO. It’s nice to pull things together how you want without having to reimplement the same logic multiple times. Just encapsulate smaller bits of useful code into their own mini packages Like if there’s some string manipulation thing I need, instead of copy pasting some snippet, I can pull in the micro package that already does this
- hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
  The thing is, many other modern ecosystems have these included. You don't need a pile of dependences because you are guaranteed to have the functionality you need. Of course you will still need modules for more specific things but since the most often used functionality is already there you end up with ten packages, not a hundred or more.

clipradiowallet 5y ago

Node has a low barrier to entry(JS), and that shows in the quality of the work. If anyone remembers QBasic, it was hated for the same reasons. It's great to grasp core concepts with, but inappropriate to build something like an ERP system. It's a toy, although a powerful one.

ochronus 5y ago

I don't think it's hated. Tons of node lovers out there :)

lvl100 5y ago

I don’t think it’s Node that people don’t like. It’s more the ecosystem and developers around it. An example would be people focusing more on branding and landing pages.

krapp 5y ago
I don't like Node, either. Having one company and one package manager entirely control a formerly open and decentralized programming language ecosystem is a regressive step from what we had before. I also don't believe Javascript should be used as a general purpose programming language outside of the browser. I don't hate JS, but it's a very flawed language designed for a specific, niche purpose and the amount of effort put into making it "enterprise worthy" (which seems to fail spectacularly and publicly just about every week or so, in ways no other language has to deal with) is the reason the JS ecosystem is a such Lovecraftian horrorshow.

sto_hristo 5y ago

Considering its popularity, vast ecosystem, and widespread use, you can't just state that it's hated so much - that is just your impression based on few very noisy people.

Nicksil 5y ago
>Considering its popularity, vast ecosystem, and widespread use, you can't just state that it's hated so much - that is just your impression based on few very noisy people. I wouldn't say it's popular; it's ubiquitous. It is the only language available for development on one of the most used platforms in history: The Internet. Also, I'd wager there's more than just a few of those very noisy people.
- RobertWHurst 5y ago
  That would be something someone would say if they where part of a small noisy group... Scratches chin and looks up thoughtfully
- sto_hristo 5y ago
  It's ubiquitous because it is popular. If it wasn't popular, nobody would want to use, everyone would hate it, and Evil Corp Incorporated would ride in on the Savior Horse and give everyone the remedy to javascript. But no. Instead of all that, javascript spread beyond the browser. It's in my TV (plain html/js + Wasm), on my desktop in the form of an IDE and as a VPN (at the very least the UI part of it), on SpaceX's Dragon Capsule (which itself is in Space). JavaScript, along with HTML are the among the few of the most scrutinized and battle tested technologies ever. Billions of QAs ranging across the whole world, ranging from completely incapable users to sophisticated teams of security engineers bash at it tirelessly and without sleep. And this thing holds. I get it, it has the shitty parts, but it also evolves, becoming better and better. And most importantly - it's one standard. No branches, no perlisms. Just one organism evolving. It's really great when you come see it through the prejudice.
  - pseudalopex 5y ago

bdcravens 5y ago

Being heavily coupled to the front-end. There's a perceived attitude that many Node devs are just front-end devs with enough back-end knowledge to be dangerous. With this is the overloading of the term "full stack". The early perceived coupling with MongoDB didn't help.

recursivedoubts 5y ago

Because of this: https://i.redd.it/h7nt4keyd7oy.jpg https://i.redd.it/h7nt4keyd7oy.jpg I remember back in the late 2000's/early 2010s, there was a blogger, I think at google, who claimed that "the next programming language has already been chosen for you". In retrospect, he was clearly talking about javascript, which got a tremendous push from the big tech players despite all its obvious problems. Now we are stuck with a mess of code written in an ugly language. Why the big guys picked javascript, I don't know. Maybe to ensure that everyone was so bogged down in dependencies, language incompatibilities and callback hell that no competitors would arise? EDIT: It was Steve Yeggie, back in 2007: https://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2007/02/next-big-language.html https://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2007/02/next-big-language.h...

antisol 5y ago
Haha, nice link. Yeah, pretty much this. I'd expand on it to answer the original question more fully from my perspective: I don't actually hate node.js per se. I'm sure it's a very good javascript environment. For me, the problem is a fundamental one: you're choosing to write javascript somewhere where you don't have to be writing javascript. I disagree on principle with doing that: friends don't let friends choose js. For me, any technical merits of the implementation and the benefits of running the same code on both server and client sides aren't important - IMO you're better off to just use a good language instead, only using as much js as is absolutely necessary. I literally don't think I've ever seen anybody try to argue that js is a good language. I can't conceive of anybody trying to argue that such a pitiful standard library is a good idea. Why in god's name would you choose to use it server side when you could be writing something less excruciating like perl or php or assembler or brainfuck? > Why the big guys picked javascript, I don't know. To be fair, they never really picked it per se, it was just the only thing that was kinda-sorta standardised enough that you could write code and kinda-sorta-almost get it to run on most browsers without installing some horrible plug-in. I think a more appropriate question is why it never got replaced with something not-awful.
switch007 5y ago
The larger book covers things like scripting CSS and SVGs and goes in to exhaustive detail about the language. If you subtract the smaller from the larger the resulting set is not “bad parts of JavaScript “ One person’s opinion of Python’s good parts would be equally small and any opinion would be very small compared it to the entire official documentation.

drbojingle 5y ago

I have no personal issues with JS/Node.js except that when I was learning it there were so many different ways to create objects that it took me a while to sort out how I wanted to do it and what all the trade offs are.

bob1029 5y ago

For me, it's less an equation of active hate. I can actually see why some people like it, and I wouldn't want to get in anyone's way on that. That said, I have found that the .NET ecosystem is an agreeable way to build the kind of software I need to build. I don't think my product would be infeasible in a Node.JS ecosystem, but it would certainly be more painful for reasons that are specific to our problem domain. If I had to take a shot across the proverbial HN language war deck, I would say that dependency management is the biggest reason I would prefer to avoid Node.JS on future projects. I have a very complex .NET code base which uses 3rd party dependencies you can count on one hand. Our customers really enjoy that kind of thing.

farleykr 5y ago

Can’t remember where I first heard this but I think it applies here: There are two kinds of programming languages. Those people complain about and those no one uses. EDIT: To add a more constructive comment: Don’t worry too much when people hate on a given language and don’t try to make a decision based on what tool or language people are complaining about. Every tool has its usefulness and its drawbacks.

mbrodersen 5y ago
I think you are quoting Bjarne Stroustrup (C++ creator).

smoyer 5y ago

I don't hate node, I just realized that on the server-side, by the time I added enough modules to make something work I could get better performance from a Jakarta EE application server and write far less code. Go's standard library comes with a lot of the same batteries built in and while I write more code in Go, the compiled binary is small (good for container management) and I use less dependencies. So that last sentence is the key. When I was writing a lot of Java, I learned to curate my dependency graph carefully. When writing in Go, I've become even more careful to only use widely-adopted packages though I'm a bit more lenient with test-only package. I've predominately stopped using Node.js because it's dependency graph is simply unmanageable. Node.js itself provides a facade of multiprocessing as well as other niceties you'd expect to find on the server-side but to do anything substantial you either need to code it yourself or you adopt a huge dependency tree. Downstream security vulnerabilities and bugs mean you're continuously updating versions and it's not always pretty. Now that I've adopted the write a bit more code and use fewer dependencies mentality, perhaps I should try another project in Node.js. I have to admit that Typescript (and even some of the EMCA improvements) also make it more attractive.

xaduha 5y ago

It was like mold that suddenly grew everywhere. Monopoly of JS in browsers translated into a big share of server-side pie too. People had all the options and they chose JS still, not a situation to be happy about if you ask me.

muglug 5y ago

“There are only two kinds of languages: the ones people complain about and the ones nobody uses.” —— Bjarne Stroustrup

dsego 5y ago

Because it doesn't require __init__.py in every directory?

6510 5y ago

For a front end language designed in 2 weeks it is quite good. That we are stuck with it is kinda sad but its good enough. If you design a tool (or DSL) you must tailor it to the problem it needs to solve. It must not be overly generic while still covering the entire scope. This is extremely hard and it usually takes a few versions for a language to get it right. Then we take the DSL and implement it in an entirely different situation(????) Look, I can use my wrench to hammer in nails! What to say? The nails are indeed going in. Massive structures are erected. They are structurally sound but it just doesn't look professional to people who are used to hammers. I'm going to be using a hammer until end of time. I tried holding the wrench over the nail but I just couldn't bring myself to hit it. (with hammer I mean PHP)

RobertWHurst 5y ago
It wasn't designed in two weeks. The initial protype for Netscape was, but that early version of JavaScript (it was called oak at the time) is far far from its modern counterpart. This is a particularly poor take as it seems you have no idea what JavaScript actually is or how it's evolved with time. If you want a purpose built DSL then find a framework, not a language runtime.

0x456 5y ago

On the question of "is it hated", Stackoverflow publishes a survey every year on interesting questions like this. It doesn't get a lot of attention here for whatever reason. https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2021#most-loved-dreaded-and-wanted-language-love-dread https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2021#most-loved-dr...

pixelgeek 5y ago

I think about Node.js the same way that I think about the set of wrenches I have downstairs. It is a tool that I use for specific tasks. It lets me do some things in JS that I wouldn't normally and it does it efficiently enough that I don't need to look for other tools. I don't use it for full applications so I don't have some of the same issues that @ufmace mentions (ouch!) and those are clearly a problem. I suspect that a lot of the hate comes from people that would like a better Node.js so they could use it but resent that it isn't available

jmknoll 5y ago

Something that I don't see mentioned here, but which I believe drives a lot of the controversy around Node, is that it takes an extremely unopinionated approach to web development. That is, Node.js out of the box is really just a javascript runtime. You need a package to serve html, you need to decide on an application architecture and organizational structure, you need to choose an ORM. You need to make a lot of decisions that other web frameworks like Django or Rails just make for you when you build a project. The lack of opinionated defaults has some benefits: - It gives you a ton of flexibility - It makes it easy to learn the framework, since there's no magic. - It forces the team to really understand what the application does from first principles, again since there is no magic. The other side of this coin is that flexibility often leads to architectural chaos, and working with Node can feel very slow, since you're constantly reinventing the wheel. The reality is that 80% of the things I'm building basically just need some variety of MVC with a reliable and predictable way to connect to a SQL database, and Node doesn't feel like the right tool for that job.

loginx 5y ago
I think you're not seeing it mentioned here because this is comparing apples to oranges. Node is not a web development platform, it literally IS only a runtime. Rather than comparing with Django or Rails, one should instead compare it to Python and Ruby. There are several server side web framework for NodeJS also (Meteor, Sails, Express). It's possible you may have confused Node with Express, as I see that happening very frequently, but Node is used for all sorts of other workloads like desktop apps, microservices, and other general computing tasks.
- cutler 5y ago
  Comparing Node with Ruby and Python is still apples to oranges. The nearest equivalent would be comparing Node with Rack (Ruby) or WSGI (Python).

sergiotapia 5y ago

A tiny project in javascript/nodejs land has a bonkers node_modules folder full of files upon files upon files. The whole ecosystem is rotten, top to bottom. I personally know many devs who have hit the eject button and now just code in Elixir. They opted out of the lunacy that is nodejs/javascript.

BuckRogers 5y ago

I don’t like it because I don’t enjoy JS. Node itself seems great, it just needs a large standard library and mandate some form of Typescript. Even if it had those changes I’d stick to C# or take a look at Elixir.

vesuvianvenus 5y ago

I've only run into one person IRL who smacktalks Javascript. Then later I edited his Ruby script. And I was like "uhh... this could all be done in nodejs, or python, it really doesnt matter". He said javascript is a toy language. Whereas... I had worked with php, python, R, and once I got to NodeJS I fell in love with it. Then picked up ReactJS And man, so glad I went this route. I never have to apply to jobs again, given the hunger of recruiters for full stack JS devs

gtirloni 5y ago

Many people here mentioned the dependency hell in Node. Why dont the core Node developers work on improving their standard library?

antisol 5y ago
Because then you lose the one real advantage of node - running the same code both server and client side. Node has to run the same javascript as browsers run in order to keep that advantage. That means having the same standard library. So, because it's just standard javascript, to improve node's standard library you have to go through all the w3c standards processes for a new javascript / ecmascript version with your standard library improvements, then haggle with all the browser makers to get them implemented and standardised, then wait for the users to upgrade their browsers, etc etc. It's not a simple process.

Pabblo001 5y ago

I would be very appreciated if somebody could answer me :) First of all: 1) I'm a self-taught developer 2) I spend last year building my app on MERN stack The problem with JavaScript technologies is that you have to add many dependencies into your project. Each module / library / framework has their own documentation which is time consuming if you are self-taught to go through it The question really is: - Is .NET or any other framework so called "battery included" ? or I also need to add hundreds of dependencies i.e. authentication -> password hashing, jsonwebtokens etc.. - As .NET or any other framework requires more code vs Node.js -> does it pay off later on during refactoring? Means is it more productive vs any JS framework? I'm really considering to spend next year learning C# with .NET because being solo dev it's really time consuming constantly monitor what did change and what needs to be refactored. JS stack doesn't help with maintaining the project in a long run (or I have limitted knowledge) it is really time consuming stack tbh I agree that creating a simple CRUD app for web course it is easy but if you need to do something more advanced... Should I start learning C# ? or .NET also require thousands of depedencies i.e. file upload (multer docs!!! Man I know them almost by heart now...)

Jensson 5y ago
> The question really is: - Is .NET or any other framework so called "battery included" ? Basically every other web stack is "battery included" compared to node.js. It is the only framework having this problem as far as I know. Rails, Django, the java frameworks, net etc, all of them have basically everything you need out of the box.
- hidden-spyder 5y ago
  Why did it become so popular and well adopted if that was the case?
  - josephcsible 5y ago
    Because a bunch of developers already knew JavaScript from frontend work, and node.js meant that they didn't have to bother learning any other languages to do backend work too.

swman 5y ago

It’s hated by people who have either never bothered with it and are on the JS hate train, or it’s hated by people who had to deal with poorly executed code. If you know the use case fits, then it’s great and will help you scale fast at minimal cost. However that takes a bit of experience to understand/implement. It has some flaws sure, but unless you’re going out of your way to use poor practices or using node for a task it isn’t great for, that’s kinda on you right? Used node for many things, including services currently in use by many millions of users. It’s just a tool in the toolbox, so use it like one where it makes sense.

jgb1984 5y ago

My experience installing several tools that are built on nodejs has led me to the conclusion that I will simply not use something if it's made with nodejs. I'm not installing 127 dependencies just to get some tiny CLI tool to run. Give me any Linux tool written in Rust, Go, C, C++, Python, it always goes well and without fuss. But nodejs and ruby based software has given me nothing but headaches.

craftoman 5y ago

Node.js hated by developers cause of JavaScript, the most hated language. It's simple.

singularity2001 5y ago

To me it's the async function coloring mess of js which made node unattractive. ( together with the import require mjs split )

midrus 5y ago

Node and JavaScript are extremely popular (used by a ton of people). Being popular means you get a lot of criticism. Same happens to java, PHP, and any other popular language.

dogberry 5y ago

Full Stack. Now, that's a dirty composite in some corners and rarely entirely true-- but in some cases... backend (Node) and front-end (let's say React) are not handled by two developers, but one. They might also sing the theme tune. That flexibility regardless of the fat wad of packages, is both profitable (in the short term) and valuable in the long term as a proof of concept. Who develops something and says "that's done, finished, everlasting"? It's useful to have a combined ecosystem in many cases, accessible and friendly to a single, dare I say it, "Full Stack" developer. If it needs to be made better, if it needs refactoring, everything is on the table until it doesn't make sense. If the product works great... if it needs to move away from node, fine. If you build a house that's worth looking at, nobody's thinking about the bricks, but that doesn't mean things should stay as they are.

The-Brent 5y ago

Here's the thing. JS does not suck. Node does not suck. They exist and are widely used precisely because they do not suck and deliver many advantages that are preferred by many developers over alternatives. I hate Python and could go on all day about what's wrong with it, but it doesn't suck. I use it when it is appropriate for the task at hand, but find it is rarely the best language for the job - given what I know and what I prefer. Most people that hate a language also avoid it and, therefore, tend to not have made their peace with its shortcomings, so don't have an honest reckoning. It is unfair to completely disparage a language until you have fully figured out how to understand and work with it, warts and all. Frankly, until then, you aren't yet informed enough to make a summary judgement. You are just cherry-picking your dislikes. I have rarely heard a criticism that did anything but highlight the critic's lack of knowledge. For example, there is a common criticism about the lack of a standard library. Well, that is how the ES or Node ecosystems are structured. It is not a flaw - it is just a different approach. If you work intelligently within that paradigm, it is actually quite nice. If you hold onto your expectation that a standard library is a part of any respectable ecosystem, you're going to be perpetually dissatisfied with ES/Node. It may not be what you like or expect, but it is not inherently wrong or lacking. Parenthetically, anyone who makes the standard library complaint about Node just doesn't know Node. It has a very complete set of functionality natively, for its purpose. It is not going to offer much in the way of math operations, sorting algorithms, etc. That is not its purpose. If you want those things, you can add them. If you think that a given dependency is too big, too small, incomplete, or poorly managed, write your own, and publish it like many have done. But be warned - if it gets popular, there will be no end of complaints about what's wrong with your library because ... well ... it is actually developers who suck. We have opinions and are quick to convince ourselves that those opinions are fact and anyone who disagrees is not as smart as we are.

RobertWHurst 5y ago

It's not. I work with a range of languages - go, rust, python, ruby, and yes even JavaScript. In my 15 years as an engineer most of the engineering teams tasked with a node project I've worked with enjoyed it quite a bit. Those who didn't struggled because they were still learning the more functional patterns used in the node community, and it required some relearning given the languages they came from. In my experience 99% of the time those who express a hatred for node have never programed with it, or lack experience. Now given that there are shortcomings like any tool or language. But hating it - doesn't make any sense to me unless your ignorant of it. It's a fantastic programming environment. By the way if anyone thinks that JavaScript is on the same level as PHP I invite you to visit PHP sadness.