One Year with Node.js | Hacker News Reader

One Year with Node.js

joyent.com

57 pointsbcantrill21 comments

Reminds me of this clip from the Daily Show where Donald Rumsfeld claimed he was always skeptical about bringing western-style democracy to the Middle East, even after championing that idea for a decade:

http://thedailyshow.cc.com/full-episodes/x3o1ly/june-11--201...

This is the same guy who said 'io.js, what's that?' And paid people not to switch... He's not fooling anyone http://readwrite.com/2015/02/03/joyent-nodejs-incubator-iojs...

One more thing: Developers using IO instead of Node are, well, not invited.

“IO.js, what’s that?” asked Joyent CEO Scott Hammond in response to my query about whether projects based on the fork would be able to enter. “This is a Node.js project for Node.js innovations.” "

Disclaimer: I'm Joyent's CTO and I work for Scott. Normally I wouldn't comment on something on which I'm so obviously conflicted, but the record needs to be set straight on this point: Scott was taken entirely out of context by the reporter. In reference to the node.js incubator, the reporter (reasonably) asked about io.js. As an attempt at humor (albeit perhaps an ill advised one), Scott responded with: "IO.js -- what's that?" When there was an awkward silence, it was instantly clear to Scott that his attempt at humor had fallen flat -- and it was immediately clarified to the reporter that it was a joke: that he obviously knew what io.js was, and that the emphasis of the program was on node.js. That the reporter published the quote anyway (implying that Scott didn't, in fact, know what io.js was) was to take Scott grossly out of context. When we later asked ReadWriteWeb to clarify that Scott had been taken out of context, they flatly refused -- which is unfortunate, because it has resulted in heaps of undeserved abuse. (Many who have been involved with io.js have, in fact, gone out of their way to praise working with Scott.[1][2])

Now if I may inject my personal (if biased) opinion: the objective of the reporter was not to get the facts straight in this case, but rather to get eyeballs on the page -- ginning conflict if and as necessary. This is unfortunate, but it's not at all a surprise. It should also serve as a warning to all who engage with those who write about current events for a living: some (many, in fact) hold themselves up as journalists and work hard to get the story right -- but not all do, and one must be very careful, especially when attempting humor that might be deliberately taken out of context!

[1] https://twitter.com/mikeal/status/555572909247574017

[2] https://twitter.com/dshaw/status/610821802466639873

As much as I leaned toward the merger (running both in production sucks) I don't think people thought he was being serious--obviously he had to know what io.js was. Instead of being humorous it comes off as somewhat smug and ignoring a legitimate question or at least that's how I took it.

...running both in production sucks...

I'm sure it does. Can you describe the situation that has forced you to do this? Do you rely on modules that are limited to one or the other? Are those internal modules?

I simply haven't had the time to upgrade some but others are running on Elastic Beanstalk which is capped at Node 0.10.26 believe it or not.

For newer things I'm running io.js 2.x and patiently waiting for the first merged release but wanted io.js for the ES6 functionality and IIRC Node 0.12.0 wasn't out yet.

Have we heard yet when to expect the first merged release? I haven't found anywhere that its been stated.

Looks like they support up to 0.12.4 now.

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/elasticbeanstalk/latest/dg/conce...

Good catch. The AMI I'm using could be outdated. I'll have to update later.

I had a problem where fibers was working on v0.12.3 with two applications, and when I deployed a third one with the regular "npm install && forever start" deal I got a "package did not self-register" issue that was only solved by rolling back to v0.10.36.

So why didn't you publish anything about it? You've had tons of chances to make amends to the io.js community before the merge - a simple "I know what io.js is" tweet would have done it, or a blog post, or even a comment on the article or the HN discussion or reddit discussion it caused. Don't get me wrong, a lot of people deserve credit for the fantstic work on the merge (by mainly, people like mikeal) but don't think the community is not worried about the governance model or that people enjoy the fact the board sits above the TC, it's a necessity because projects need money but it's not like the community forgets why the split happened in the first place.

Respectfully, I never took from it that Scott didn't know what io.js was, rather that he knew and was being vocally dismissive.

How quickly did you guys expect to get treated like evil corporate overlords? I bet not this quickly.

TL;DR communication is so hard

> While crucial, an open governance model by itself does not guarantee long-term success. We’ll need to balance the needs of the strong developer community with those of the users

Correct me if I am wrong but aren't "developers" the very users of Node.js?

> and encourage a vibrant ecosystem of technology and service providers to ensure the bright future we all envision.

He speaks about the "goal" without detailing the strategy. In short, he throws platitudes at the readers without effectively bringing anything interesting.

I understand that this is a PR but a couple lines would have been welcomed. You know, to ensure that we can envision "this bright future"!

Correct me if I am wrong but aren't "developers" the very users of Node.js?

No. There are developers of nodejs. And then there are users of nodejs that use it to build other things.

Thank you for clarifying this, it is the following excerpt that confused me since Scott Hammond referred to "users of Node.js" as "developers".

> I was well aware of Node.js’ developer popularity and success — mainly because those who use and love Node.js also love to talk about it

I have a hard time imagining how different are the needs of the "strong developer community" and "node.js users". If anything they seem completely aligned. Node.js (and io.js) has done an amazing job taking into account community feedback.

I fail to see how more transparency, openness and empowerment for the developers "unbalance" the needs of both groups. The only "loser" in this whole open-governance thing seems to be Joyent.

In short, my feeling is that sentence could be reformulated as follow:

"While crucial, an open governance model by itself does not guarantee long-term success. We’ll need to balance the needs of the strong developer community with those of our shareholders"

Maybe I am a bit too cynical or harsh, please let me know if you disagree with me.

I agree with everything you wrote. However, users and developers of nodejs do have slightly different interests.

I think Golang is a good example of this... the developers (mostly Google) want Golang to be small, less complex, etc (at the very least, it makes their job easier if they don't have to support certain features). But the users want generics, exceptions, and assertions (among other things).

So there's this difference in point of view -- the developers have a certain vision of what Golang should be.. and the users just want to get their project (that happens to be implemented in Go) finished as quickly/efficiently as possible.

I think developers are users for sure, but not all users are developers. There's also a large corporate wing of users for node. Huge companies like Walmart and Netflix who are invested in the technology and want to see Node.js develop in a certain way to their advantage. At the end of the day, there's money to be made in the technology somehow. And this isn't to say it's a bad thing at all. Stakeholders of node.js isn't just developers at this point.

Good point.

> At the end of the day, there's money to be made in the technology somehow.

But reading Scott Hammond's PR again I have the impression that he oppose the open-governance model to Enterprise users' needs. I might be operating under the wrong set of assumptions but to me, an open-governance model is the best way to make the smartest decisions possible for the language's future and accommodates everyone needs as much as possible.

Slightly off-topic but Eran Hammer's post describe some of the conflicts between Enterprise needs and the Web world's in the context of OAuth 2.0 : http://hueniverse.com/2012/07/26/oauth-2-0-and-the-road-to-h...

Ah, the joys of revisionist history...

I'm uncomfortably bipolar about this guy.

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