Background information on Node.js

Yesterday the Node.js project adopted the Contributor Covenant Code of Conduct which is an important step towards fostering an open and welcoming environment ensuring the project is a harassment-free experience for everyone, regardless of age, body size, disability, ethnicity, gender identity and expression, level of experience, nationality, personal appearance, race, religion, or sexual identity and orientation. While this isn't a cool piece of technology, it is a step which should give the Node.js project a firmer standing in the world. In the past some open source projects have run into serious problems when team members acted with discrimination or harassment towards other team members. Having taken a stand like this, the team has put a firm stake in keeping the community open to all.

Node.js offers us an exciting new model for developing web applications and a statement in a recent episode of the TWiT Network's Triangulation podcast gave me an interesting lens through which to interpret the excitement around this new thing. That episode featured an interview with Gordon Bell, formerly the VP of Engineering at Digital Equipment Corporation, a company which at the time (1972) was revolutionizing the computer industry from being dominated by Mainframes to being dominated by Minicomputers. DEC's reason for existence was to develop and promote Minicomputers, but they were later supplanted by the Microcomputer era and DEC was unable to make the transition and later died. Gordon Bell is currently a researcher at Microsoft. He spoke about many things during the interview, he has over 40 years experience in developing key aspects of the computer industry, and his discussion about Bells Law struck me as a very apt way to describe the excitement around Node.js.

Node.js is a young software development platform. It's only about 6 years old, and many software developers are still unsure about where Node.js fits into the landscape. It's JavaScript, which many people pigeon-hole as a browser language, but Node.js doesn't run on browsers but on servers. The question above illustrates a fundamental confusion about what Node.js is, and its role in the world, because it is not an "MVC" but a complete programming platform.

There are plenty of new server side web application development technologies being developed. With the blizzard of choices before us, how do you choose between one or another? Will the newly hot web app technology really take off, or will it fizzle in a few years? For example, Node.js is getting a lot of excitement, but what about Go, or what about the mature platforms like PHP/Symfony or CakePHP?

Traditionally the server side of web applications has been written in PHP, Perl, Python, Java, C/C++, etc. Javascript traditionally was implemented only in web browsers, and hence Javascript programming has been almost completely focused on the client end of web application development. It's arguably better to have the same programming language on both client and server sides of web application development, maybe. Several attempts have been made to implement javascript for server side web application development. A new javascript stack, Node.JS, is getting a lot of attention.

A recent blog post by Ted Dziuba claims that Node.js "is a cancer" and fills out a few hundred words of inflammatory laden "proof" to make his point. The post makes a few good points but is largely off base. Perhaps the most sticking point is that CPU intensive tasks make Node servers become unresponsive, but I have a clever answer for him. Another issue he raises ("JavaScript sux") is, well, as a longtime Java programmer who used to work in the Java SE team at Sun, I've had my own moments like that, but really JavaScript is quite a nice language especially if you stick to the good bits of JavaScript.

Recently the primary supporter of Node.js, Joyent, posted a video webinar about "Node.js overview for Carriers". Eric Burns talked about a broad range of services offered by Joyent, features of Node.js, spinning it all around the needs of mobile device carriers. That is, the phone companies who provide mobile device services and run the cell phone networks, not those individuals who carry around mobile devices.

I'm reading a blog post about what Node.js is, and there's a glaring question "why in the world would anyone want to run JavaScript outside of a browser, let alone the server?" As the author of a book about Node.js it's a question I've thought about quite a bit, especially coming as I do from the Java SE team at Sun where the work of that team was highly focused on server side software (hey, it's Java) to the detriment of the client side of Java. The question comes from a belief cemented into place by 15+ years of JavaScript in the browser that it's a browser only language. However, JavaScript has a long history on server-side and is a rather cool language, and Node.js is an excellent base for developing web applications.

Traditionally the server side of web applications has been written in PHP, Perl, Python, Java, C/C++, etc. Javascript traditionally was implemented only in web browsers, and hence Javascript programming has been almost completely focused on the client end of web application development. It's arguably better to have the same programming language on both client and server sides of web application development, maybe. Several attempts have been made to implement javascript for server side web application development. A new javascript stack, Node.JS, is getting a lot of attention.