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JavaScript Is Eating The World (dev.to)
An anonymous reader shares a report: In case you haven't heard the news, JavaScript and NodeJS are single handedly eating the world of software. NodeJS is an Open Source server-side JavaScript environment based on the V8 JS rendering engine found in Google Chrome. Once only thought of as a "hipster" framework, NodeJS is fastly becoming one of the most commonly used languages in building web applications and is beginning to find its way into the Enterprise. Netflix, Microsoft, PayPal, Uber, and IBM have adopted the popular "hipster" server-side JavaScript engine for use inside high traffic, high profile production projects. Java still powers the backend of Netflix, but all the stuff that the user sees comes from Node. In addition to Node, Netflix is also using ReactJS in their stack. PayPal too is moving away from Java and onto JavaScript and NodeJS for use in their web application platform. Uber has built its massive driver / rider matching system on Node.js Distributed Web Architecture. IBM has also embraced NodeJS as well. Even Microsoft has embraced NodeJS, offering direct integrations into their Azure Platform, releasing a wealth of tutorials targeted at Node and they have even announced plans to fork the project and build their own version of Node powered by their Edge Javascript engine instead of Chrome's V8.
Fad sniffers, that's why. I'm going into my get-off-my-lawn mode here, if you don't mind.
Tech companies and consultants profit off of change, and so encourage it, whether it's the right decision or not for a particular project. When technology stagnates (becomes stable), people figure everything out, and fixing and changing becomes routine and commoditized such that orgs no longer buy expensive new stuff and don't rent consultants for $100 an hour.
The vast majority of companies don't need "web scale", but many end up copying big-co stacks anyhow in fear of being left behind. They end up acquiring NFL-level equipment for little-league.
Sometimes these fads do actually either pay off or trigger similar good ideas elsewhere such that they do have a use in aggregate, but it's usually not good for a typical company to be the guinea-pig. Let some somebody else be the guinea-pig and benefit from THEIR lessons. You won't be hip, but you also won't be burned.
Table-ized A.I.
This is a good point. Ruby, and especially Ruby on Rails, did fall out of favor quite quickly. I think that many people and organizations regret falling for the hype. Ruby and Ruby on Rails both gained a pretty bad reputation for being slow and bloated, and software written using them was often found to be difficult to maintain. Dynamically typed scripting languages might work well for quickly throwing together a prototype, but they often aren't so good for writing large software systems that must be maintained for many years or even decades.
It is also important to note that some prominent members of the Ruby and/or Ruby on Rails communities jumped ship to Rust when it started to become obvious that the Ruby and Ruby on Rails hype was wearing very thin, and the Rust hype was just starting to build.
For example, look at the Rust Core Team. We see Yehuda Katz listed, who is apparently a former member of the Ruby on Rails Core Team. We also see Steve Klabnik listed. He apparently wrote a book about Ruby on Rails with Katz. Alex Crichton appears to maintain some Ruby gems.
So over 30% of Rust's Core Team was involved with Ruby at some point. It might even be more than that. This has made me very suspicious and weary of Rust. I personally have had bad experiences with Ruby and Ruby on Rails, and I fear that I might be subjected to the same hype-driven nonsense if I get anywhere near Rust, due to the same people being involved with both.
The only reason everyone uses JavaScript in the browser is that it is the only language supported by major browsers. If browsers supported Visual Basic instead, everyone would be using Visual Basic. There is no choice. The popularity of JavaScript under these circumstances is no measure of the quality of the language. There was no "test of time", since there was no competition.
Rust is actually a decent language that can be used for serious coding for one. Also, wake up grandpa, efforts are being made to bring http closer and closer to the system, even so far as pushing the websocket model so that the current realm of java and now javascript programming is more and more the system level.
It's a sad world, granted, but more and more it is the real world.
I suspect the real killer feature of Node.js for people coming from Java and C# is the development cycle. Edit, save, hit F5 in the browser. Despite everything ugly about Javascript, that's handy.
Granted, you can get that with Perl, Python, and Ruby too and if you restrict yourself to certain Java and C# features you can also have it there. But in practice I think a lot of server side programmers first saw the instant feedback loop of Node.js first, and fell in love with it.
This. Javascript as a programming language is a piece of shit, but is installed by default on all browsers so everyone will use javascript for client-side code. Nobody uses javascript for being the best option, everyone uses javascript because they have no other choice for the job (code running in the browser)
Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time