Installing and Running node.js applications within IIS on Windows - Are you mad? | Hacker News Reader

Installing and Running node.js applications within IIS on Windows - Are you mad?

hanselman.com

40 pointsg-garron13 comments

I'm glad Node works on Windows - it'll make for more eyes on the code.

The "Why would I want node.js to run on Windows and IIS" bullets, if they're meant to compel you in the context of other platforms, I don't get:

* Process management - Upstart is standard in Ubuntu now and will manage your processes (respawn pragma).

* Scalability on multi-core servers - Nginx will load balance over as many or as few processes as you like with minimum configuration.

* Auto-update - great for development but count me out for production use. On unix needs a third-party app.

* Access to logs over HTTP - not sure why this is good? Anyway, easy win with Nginx.

The last time I tried to do any admin on Windows it was just an exercise in frustration. No decent shell (I've not used powershell - correct me if it's any good), clunky terminal, awful guis forced on the user and suppression of debugging information (including source code!).

Powershell is like Eclipse:

* usable for the task at hand

* inferior to similar tools that are 20 years old

* slower / more resource hungry than it should be

Sure Eclipse could be less resource demanding but outright claiming that it's inferior to 20 year old tools is ignorant.

The "Why would I want node.js to run on Windows and IIS" bullets, if they're meant to compel you in the context of other platforms, I don't get:

I'm guessing/hoping it has something to do with native HTML5 apps + javascript + windows hooks for native "Touch first" apps coming in Win8.

Add that to native Kinect support on Win8, and you have a pretty kick ass gesture / touch based UI on a PC.

We'll find out more at BUILD in 2 weeks.

Pretty cool. A lot nicer than running node.exe directly. I heard MS was working with Joyent to get Node running on Windows but I didn't think devs at MS would actually dedicate cycles to it and provide native IIS support. Awesome!

I played with node.exe a few weeks ago when it was first released and it worked well enough. The only problem was the lack of Windows-compatible packages. Most assume you're on *nix. Node without NPM is handicapped.

Is there any question any longer that MS is a second class web platform?

There isn't. It's just that MS is a bit more expensive than L* (LAMP for instance).

The platform is starting to approach first class, but the culture that permeates most Microsoft shops holds the platform and MS developer community back. Many MS orgs actively avoid open source and/or "community" driven projects, and possess a strong NBM and NIH attitude. This means projects like Node, even with the blessing of Scott Hanselman, will never see the light of day in their datacenters.

The way Stackoverflow operates (leveraging developer platform expertise + commercial and opensource tools) should be seen a role model. Unfortunately, in Microsoft circles, it's more of a black sheep.

Windows Azure seems pretty cool. At least it has the best relational database of the big three clouds, and the best blobstore+CDN solution. However, it makes IIS mandatory, which seems (I'm still learning) to be optimized for short queries. iisnode should make long-polling and websockets possible.

This is of limited use at the moment. Most of the useful node packages assume a unix system

And that's unfortunate npm took such a narrow approach. Also right now, there are too many duplicate packages. Is there a list of "good" packages I should install? For mysql alone there are like 6 packages. And that's not counting tools like Activerecord.

Glad to hear that Joynet is porting Node to windows. Now lets get npm to Windows.

There are many duplicate packages by intent because there is no central management authority. Some packages are alpha and some filled out ready for use. What is clear is that packages are not apt-get/appstore quality, but what do you expect? I love it, the rate of new Node.JS packages is awesome. Unfettered development.

Node is like the wild west 1800s so come prepared.

In my experience most packages on npm try and stick to pure javascript. This means they should work excellently on windows.

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