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The whole point of Node/npm/Express (as a popular module) is its modularity. Node is not just about JS on the server, it reflects a paradigm shift -- a movement

by apunic 14y ago

The whole point of Node/npm/Express (as a popular module) is its modularity. Node is not just about JS on the server, it reflects a paradigm shift -- a movement away from too much abstraction and magic back to lean and simple systems. And it's unbelievable fast. Sorry to say but such frameworks and ideas are from the last decade (Rails was the main reason why I switched to Node).

nilliams 14y ago
The whole point of Node is evented I/O in JavaScript. That's it - it doesn't take a stance on frameworks. The point of npm is ... to be a package manager. Express is a framework. I admittedly don't know much about it, but I believe it basically has pluggable middleware, like Rails. Not sure these things share the "point" you are claiming they do. It's great Node has both framework choices and a wealth of small modules that do one thing. I think there's room for both.
- nilliams 14y ago
  There was a bit of snark in this comment with the "..." which I apologise for, but I think my point was fair. Trying to paint Node as an anti-framework ecosystem is disingenuous and this is clearly not a goal of either Node, npm or Express. I love Node, and am consistently impressed by npm, but pretending that these technologies represent a "paradigm shift" and some sort of cohesive shift away from frameworks is faintly ridiculous. If you work on a team and are faced with the task of creating a large app your choice is to pick a framework or create your own from libraries. I'd argue that a (good) framework is likely to be better because the conventions are likely clearer and better documented than anything you cook up yourself by combining libraries and filling in gaps with your own code.
tlack 14y ago
Amen to that! You should consider putting together a little blog post about "the Node way." Way too many people are just porting their heavyweight frameworks from Ruby/PHP/Python and not realizing that successful Node apps are a series of tiny components (brilliantly managed by npm), not complex frameworks. This is something that I spend a lot of time thinking about (for instance, how can we apply this to the organization of corporations?)..

by apunic 14y ago

nilliams 14y ago

The whole point of Node is evented I/O in JavaScript. That's it - it doesn't take a stance on frameworks. The point of npm is ... to be a package manager. Express is a framework. I admittedly don't know much about it, but I believe it basically has pluggable middleware, like Rails. Not sure these things share the "point" you are claiming they do. It's great Node has both framework choices and a wealth of small modules that do one thing. I think there's room for both.

nilliams 14y ago
There was a bit of snark in this comment with the "..." which I apologise for, but I think my point was fair. Trying to paint Node as an anti-framework ecosystem is disingenuous and this is clearly not a goal of either Node, npm or Express. I love Node, and am consistently impressed by npm, but pretending that these technologies represent a "paradigm shift" and some sort of cohesive shift away from frameworks is faintly ridiculous. If you work on a team and are faced with the task of creating a large app your choice is to pick a framework or create your own from libraries. I'd argue that a (good) framework is likely to be better because the conventions are likely clearer and better documented than anything you cook up yourself by combining libraries and filling in gaps with your own code.

tlack 14y ago

Amen to that! You should consider putting together a little blog post about "the Node way." Way too many people are just porting their heavyweight frameworks from Ruby/PHP/Python and not realizing that successful Node apps are a series of tiny components (brilliantly managed by npm), not complex frameworks. This is something that I spend a lot of time thinking about (for instance, how can we apply this to the organization of corporations?)..