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.

Comments

Ruby

[Luthair]

Ruby was in the same position not that long ago, I wonder how many now legacy ruby apps people regret writing.

Re: Ruby

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a huge difference between Ruby and node. Ruby is slow as fuck and writing async code with it is very difficult. Node is ridiculously fast and writing async code is easy. Ruby lasted me about 6 years. Node is already upto 5 years and I can easily see it lasting another 5. And if it does get replaced by soemthing better later on. So be it... that's the life of a programmer

Based on my inexperienced observation...

[__aaclcg7560]

The Node Package Manager (NPM) is probably why Node.js is being used with every new JavaScript framework out there.

Pointy-haired bosses love node.js

[davecb]

It's easier and cheaper to staff with relatively junior .js people than pay for so-called "back end" or "full stack" programmers who know C++/Java/whatever.

In a previous life it was very important that management could hire .js people, as the new budget required they get rid of anyone expensive. Like the chief architect (;-))

Crystal ball: Defective

[Kjella]

I worked with Javascript in the 90s... if you had come in a time machine and showed me this article from 2017, I'd say if you were bat shit crazy. If you gave me next week's lottery numbers and I won the jackpot I'd say "Well I believe you're from the future... but you're still pulling my leg about this Javascript thing, right?"

Re:JavaScript should replace C

[MightyMartian]

WTF does Rust have to do with Javascript? Rust is supposed to be a memory-safe compiled language meant for system development. It's like comparing Algol to Logo.

Is it just because it's easy?

[ErichTheRed]

Doing systems integration work, my recent experience with web applications has mostly supported this point. javaScript, wrapped in FrameworkOfTheMonth, is slowly replacing client-side applications for better or worse. If we're not allowed to have rich client applications anymore, JavaScript is pretty much the only tool to make a browser act like a rich client -- but it's a good example of shoehorning a technology in just to save complexity. I'm not saying we should go back to Java applets or Flash or ActiveX, but JS is really being extended way beyond what it was ever meant to do.

I think its rise comes from a few factors -- massive amounts of cheap CPU and memory being available on clients, and a billion web frameworks to make using it easy for beginners. This latest dotcom bubble has spawned a bunch of "coder bootcamps" that teach basic front-end web development in a JS framework. It really is easy to throw something together that functions. However, you can definitely tell when either the framework and/or the programmer isn't doing something efficiently...just look at client side UIs that totally freeze up when a database call is taking longer than it should, or websites that slow quad-core systems with 16 GB of RAM to a crawl while they load 11,304,283 snippets of code from different hosted libraries.

So fastly, you can hardly fathomy the bigliness

[Krakadoom]

Fastly? Since when is Trump writing summaries for Slashdot?

Re:Will always be a "hipster" framework

[TheDarkMaster]

You can do some good applications on Java if you bravely (and insistently) resist the idea of filling the code with abstractions, layers and more layers of classes, "factories" and so on. Why you would make your code with ten+ layers of classes between the user input and the object that actually does the job, when you can do the same work with two classes (or less)?