Ask HN: Anyone using Vertx(Node.js inspired for the JVM)? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Anyone using Vertx(Node.js inspired for the JVM)?

11 pointsjustauser4 comments

I saw mention of vertx in an earlier thread regarding Node.js and VoltDB but this was the first time I've heard of the project. The creator of the project apparently is Tim Fox known for the HornetQ messaging project. Any feedback on this?

From the site( http://vertx.io/ ): What is vert.x?

Vert.x is the framework for the next generation of asynchronous, effortlessly scalable, concurrent applications.

Vert.x is a framework which takes inspiration from event driven frameworks like node.js, combines it with a distributed event bus and sticks it all on the JVM - a runtime with real concurrency and unrivalled performance. Vert.x then exposes the API in Ruby, Java and Groovy as well as JavaScript.

Haven't seen it before, but it looks exactly like Node. Is it just the Node API on top of Rhino?

(Tim Fox here, project lead)

The core api is similar to node.js, but that API is available in not just JavaScript, but in Ruby, Java and Groovy.

Unlike node.js it also includes websockets and sockjs support and a distributed event bus so you can link together multiple nodes on the server side and extending into client side JavaScript.

Since it runs on the JVM and has real threading (unlike V8) it means you can scale with a single instance far better than you can with node.js. And you don't have to resort to hacky forks in order to scale it over multiple cores.

In my perf tests so far, performance (far) exceeds node.js for some simple HTTP test cases. I will hopefully publish some results in the next few weeks when we release 1.0 final.

So one way of thinking about it is node.js, on steroids and not just for JavaScript.

Vert.x is a VMware sponsored project.

Thanks for your hard work. I really love seeing the continued effort on your part to keep up-to-date with the awesome sockjs protocol.

Don't see anywhere docs on integrating it with rails apps. Are there references anywhere (or is that too heavyweight for your 1.0 release)?

Clickable: http://vertx.io/

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