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Comment by thomas11 | Hacker News Reader

I don't quite get how node.js comes into play here. I've seen lots of blog posts about it, but never used it. It seems to be about network programming. Indeed, the node website says "Node's goal is to provide an easy way to build scalable network programs."

Would someone enlighten me what the motivation is to use it as an editor's scripting environment?

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node.js is a way to get people to click on an article. If it said "new editor" no one would care. But the buzzword fashionable 'node.js' means people will assume it's earth changingly awesome.

Comments like the parent make me sad. It could be summed up as "node.js, damn hipsters." It's just another form of fanboyism, except negative.

There are not many good, scriptable editors for programmers. Actually, I would consider only 3 for serious use: Emacs, Vim and TextMate. Of these, only one has really good integration with OS X.

If I was considering switching editors, the language that is used to extend it would be one of the most important factors (I love Emacs, but Emacs Lisp is seriously broken). The fact that Kod uses node.js means two things:

1) It's JavaScript, so it's high level, has nice semantics and it's extremely popular;

2) It uses a reasonably fast dialect of JS, and has the necessary infrastructure, like CommonJS modules and access to the filesystem.

So, Node.js is the thing that makes this topic actually hacker-news-worthy.

I don't really see the language used to script an editor as being really important. But then I've never considered an editor as being that important. As long as it works any will do.

Don't get me wrong, I wasn't trying to beat this project down, I'm just pointing out that 'node.js' carries a "wow it must be awesome" weighting at the moment.

Give it a couple of years and node.js will be old and boring and there'll be a new fashionable language everyone has to jump on.

I would have whole-heartedly agreed with you right up until a couple weeks ago. Since then I've taken note of the wave of activity happening and really dug in. There are a lot of issues still with Javascript and it's history, but there are some compelling things happening and I think we need to start paying attention and keep an open mind.

I suspect that next fashionable thing will be Go btw...

Node.js is a universal environment much like Python or Ruby, but runs the highly performant V8 JavaScript virtual machine. The choice of JavaScript is simple — many people know it and it's the future of scripting. Also, I'm active in the core dev of Node.js which makes it extra fun to use.

OT: Is "performant" really a word? I see it on HN all the time, and it strikes me as made-up business jargon.

Performant[1] (comparative more performant, superlative most performant): (jargon, chiefly computing) Capable of or characterized by an adequate or excellent level of performance or efficiency.

  "Ours is a performant network monitoring and systems monitoring tool."

  "This software is ten percent more performant than its predecessor."

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[1]: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/performant

Yes, but somebody adding it to wiktionary doesn't make it a word. It just seems lazy to make up new words rather that taking the trouble to use an existing one.

http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=performant&ye...

I wonder if the early appearance is OCR error?

Actually my point in posting the qoute and the link was to show that it's jargon.

Anyhow do you have an issue with scalable[1] too?

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[1]: http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=Scalable&year...

It being used makes it a word. Words get added to dictionaries often. Where do you think they came from to begin with?

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