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Comment by smrtinsert | Hacker News Reader

Gosling himself said that scripting projects were always fun and fast, but when the job got large only static languages made sense (paraphrasing). This definitely echos my experience. The only way I've been able to manage large scripting projects is by building a quasi static type system - the strictest conventions allow you to decrease cognitive wait substantially.

What I find amusing lately is the exodus from Ruby over to Javascript. What's the thought there - maybe there weren't enough braces? Maybe THIS time, this scripting language will work! What valiant hope.

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Well, one reason to move from Ruby to JavaScript is speed: there are very fast JavaScript implementations, compared to the fastest Ruby. And since you need to know JavaScript ANYWAY for the client side, it makes a certain amount of sense to just use it everywhere. So I guess that'd be two reasons, if I can go all Spanish Inquisition here...

> What I find amusing lately is the exodus from Ruby over to Javascript. What's the thought there - maybe there weren't enough braces? Maybe THIS time, this scripting language will work! What valiant hope.

I'm not one of these developers, but I believe the appeal is largely the ability to work with one language in the "full stack": Node.js on the server, JS in the browser obviously, and maybe MongoDB or Postgres.

I find the other approach much better. Use a good language on both the server and the client, using one of the many language_x to javascript compilers.

The prevalence of Javascript has nothing to do with the language itself and everything to do with the ecosystem.

The web has become our operating system, and Javascript is its language.

Ugh... yeah it's bad.

Nodejs? Solving stuff that erlang have solved.

The only approach I like is use a backend language to create a RESTful server to server data. And let clientside javascript mvc handle the layout and looks.

Don't let me get started on those javascript people that think MongoDB and noSQL is going to replace SQL.

Node.js is actually an interesting idea. Instead of threads they force you to write non-blocking code based on callbacks.

JavaScript made sense because web devs already knew it. Also, and more importantly, there was no blocking io library.

So the developer is forced to write code in a way that makes Node perform well.

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