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Comment by IloveHN84 | Hacker News Reader

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IloveHN84

Why JavaScript instead of something more performant?

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Normally the language for doing this kind of system building would be .. Bourne shell. Or Perl/Python.

I was actually expecting Bash scripts before I looked at the GitHub repo.

TBH, I think the code would be a lot simpler if it was just Bash.

What for? It's just glue code, it doesn't actually run the micro-VMs.

Because I don't want to have to install the massive nodejs runtime just to glue things together.

Then you're going to have a hard time in the post Node.js era. You also probably want to avoid looking at what many popular desktop apps use behind the scenes :)

I avoid any desktop app that uses electron or similar. Electron is still a hog, and most things written in electron have alternatives. I don't use the slack desktop app for this reason, as an example.

So you use the browser app which uses approximately the same amount of memory / resources?

Minus the browser. Each Electron app isn’t just the running web app but also the browser instance too. Where as a web app running in a browser wouldn’t consume its own browser instance.

That browser instance alone can make quite a noticeable difference.

Run this in a docker env then?

docker run -it --entrypoint /bin/sh -v $PWD:/bla -v /run/docker.sock:/run/docker.sock node:12

apk add git docker cdrkit libvirt-daemon qemu-system-x86_64

npm install https://github.com/ottomatica/slim

cd /bla && /node_modules/.bin/slim

This is not even remotely a concern for any enterprise that would use this. Fretting over this is like fretting over the gas left in the nozzle when you fill your car.

I'm just curious what you feel about Java, .Net, Python and Ruby? Ruby is a hair smaller, but the others are actually bigger than the NodeJS runtime, with .Net and Java being significantly bigger.

Or, do you only run software hand crafted in assembly?

You're painting a false dichotomy. There are lighter-weight options, like Go.

There's also Rust, C/C++, D, and others. It's not exactly a false dichotomy as I'm pretty sure GP and others who bring up these tropes against Node do use other scripted or higher level languages that have an even bigger footprint.

Nothing stops the tool from being published as a single binary in Homebrew using pkg or nexe. That will probably happen once it gets enough traction, it's actually a lot better for maintainers to support a single version of Node.

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