Ryan Dahl's NodeConf Slides | Hacker News Reader

Ryan Dahl's NodeConf Slides

nodejs.org

45 pointsfranze20 comments

We're collecting coverage of NodeConf on Lanyrd: http://lanyrd.com/2011/nodeconf/coverage/ - 13 slide decks and 9 session write-ups so far.

Cool information about the difficulties of writing high-concurrency software that runs on both Windows and Unix. I like the approach of removing #ifdef hell from the Node portion of the code by putting it in liboio. I hope the goal of using less than 100 mb RSS is met, it'd be nice to run Node on smaller machines.

Now that is how you compare how different operating systems work as servers. Compared to: http://www.reddit.com/r/geek/comments/h51qr/my_office_just_g...

I can't see any possible reason for someone to run node.js on Windows. Even if windows is installed on his local machine.

For debugging, we're using Vagrant. One can install on VM using Vagrant whatever he wants.

Really, why? Why node.js on the server running Windows?

I also can't figure this out? But... It's his project, and perhaps there's some pressure from his employer?

There's legions of programmers out there using Windows. Just because they choose to operate on a MS OS/stack doesn't mean they're not worth targeting or reaching out to. Beyond just this fact, you need to think about the future - when you were young, how did you get started programming?

Javascript is spreading to more and more devices, and being the main language of the web browser environment doesn't hurt this. I'd wager it definitely doesn't hurt to be able to install Node on a Windows machine if you're a new programmer and want to get into programming.

"when you were young, how did you get started programming?"

By installing a linux distro.

Pah. Youngsters today don't know they're born.

We only had a BBC Micro to cut out programming teeth on, but we were 'appy...

Node.js on the developer desktop, yes, running Windows.

While perhaps not a common use case, one thing I'm interested in exploring is building cross-platform "desktop" applications using Node, either command line utilities or GUI apps served locally to the user's browser.

Sounds like Java.

Nope, they'd just be web apps. More like Adobe Air or Titanium.

I run coffeescript on my windows machines from time to time. Why not?

I don't use node on Windows personally, but a review of the mailing list shows there's certainly a demand, a lot of chatter, especially directly after releases.

Ryan seems to recognize Windows support is something a non-trivial portion of the community want, and is responding appropriately.

btw, Ryan briefly mentions node on Windows in this talk at about the 1:00 mark, and replies "Windows is very important" to an audience member: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jo_B4LTHi3I

Until Node gets long stack traces natively (as mentioned in the slides) check out this hack: https://github.com/tlrobinson/long-stack-traces

It works in stock Chrome too, since it's implemented in JavaScript using V8's stack trace API.

Caveats: There is some performance penalty. Not for use in production. May "leak" memory in certain situations (e.x. function foo() { setTimeout(foo, ms); })

in my humble opinion: supporting windows for the server side is like supporting IE 6 for the client side -> ressources best spend elsewhere

This is... nothing like supporting IE6, and furthermore your opinion of IE6 sounds like you really don't get the point of supporting it to begin with.

While I'm not an IE6 advocate, support for that browser generally comes down to the general percentage of it visiting your site. If there is convertable revenue there you will (99% of the time) end up supporting it; if not, that's your loss. This is a hard fact.

The same thing goes for Node. There are countless numbers of programmers operating on a Windows stack; the large number of Windows machines opens up Node to an adoption level that's actually far beyond what it could ever really gain with just Mac/Linux/BSD alone. It's possible Joyent has a vested interest in this, but I'd also wager it's just about being available to as many programmers as possible because the market is there.

there are major costs to support legacy and incompatible plattforms, costs mostly paid in additional workload and testing, loss of "agility" and speed. it's very impressive how far node.js has come in a very short time. yeah maybe the raise in market-share (and additional developers for the ecosystem) will be more valuable than the costs, maybe not.

i, as an egoistical dev-on-mac, would rather see a stable 1.0 for mac/unix soon, than a 0.8 for max/unix/win within the same timeframe.

as a thought experiment: would native max os x apps be as sophisticated as they are now, if all devs had decided to port them to windows (xp / vista / 7 / ...), too.

Anyone opposed to supporting windows can go on their merry way using linux/osx. Don't forget the potential for creation of new modules (and possibly the evolution of nodejs itself) from the massive legion of windows developers out there.

Doesn't sound like a humble opinion. I would also like to know specifically why. What are they trying to achieve with it? Without it you have inane platform wars on the sidelines. The context changes a lot with that little piece of info.

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