GnarlinBrando

Most technologies are made up components of older technologies or ideas, I am not saying that you cannot do something genuinely new. But I am also sure that if you talk to the guys who built pagerank they probably had some inspirations and stuff they took ideas from. It is all perspective.

I agree its the concepts that matter, it is just that whenever I hear this argument no one (who is making it) can actually point out exactly what those concepts are or even point to any reason why another event driven framework would be better (besides the obvious I already know the language gambit which applies to node equally, if not more). Many people cant even point out the obvious frameworks that do similar stuff, with maybe twisted being the exception.

I would be incredibly surprised if even a handful of dev shops have server side devs who only work in node. But I don't really see what that has to do with anything.

I get that this is mostly about the 'hype,' but if Node and the community are doing well, have good documentation and we are seeing the technology used to implement some cool stuff (trello for example) then how is the hype confusing? That is the thing that I don't get. Node is now a cross-platform environment that fits easily into PaaS and SaaS concepts, is gaining hosting options by the day (heroku, azure, etc) has a huge library of third party modules, and the majority of people using it seem to understand what it is and is not. It seems obvious to me that any new technology, or new implementation of a technology if that makes you feel better about the terminology, that has all those things going for will generate a certain amount of hype.

I would definitely agree with you there. The documentation, as well as the number of tutorials and ebooks, is one of the big reasons for the so called 'hype.' I tried looking at twisted, I know enough python to be able to throw together some simple scripts and work with tools written in it I'm no pro though, and felt totally lost.

That is sort of like saying a smart phone is not new technology. In a sense it is not. It is the combination of two already existing technologies, but isn't that pretty much what all new technologies are? On top of that it is a new language and each language is going to be better or worse at doing certain tasks. It is also frequently more beneficial to actually learn something for yourself.

As for your second point, client side programming (GUI in general) is very event driven so a lot of people coming to node because they have javascript experience have event driven programming experience. And as far as I know (I may just be ignorant of it, and would love to know if I am wrong) there is no go-to text on event driven frameworks, nor has there been anything as popular as node that has been so focused on events besides tcl/tk which there isn't really a wealth of readily accessible knowledge about.

Again, I could be totally wrong, but unless you can point towards where someone working with node can learn these lessons I am gonna go on ahead thinking that node and it's community are doing well. There is after all a wealth of community driven documentation and tutorials being assembled already. I would hazard a guess that the amount of information available to someone new to node is more robust than many older frameworks/languages/programming technologies in general.

Issacs (the guy who built npm) is now the lead for node. Ryan Dahl has moved back to researching stuff or joyent. Your point about being built around other peoples technology is totally valid, but in regards to coffeescript I think it will prove useful as it will probably help steer development of JS itself.

Isn't that just part of the process of exploring the new technology though? Sure a lot of that will fail, but people will learn from what works and what doesn't. I think it is less of a problem that people who know javascript are choosing node because they know js (like myself), and more of a problem that there are so many posts complaining about people wanting to expand their horizons instead of trying to actually educate those people.

I agree with you completely. I thing it so important to remember both the value of criticism and that the technology is still growing and adapting.

Because it is inherently attractive to people who have worked client side in javascript and want to expand. Like me. I'm relatively new to the industry. I know javascript fairly well and while I might not be as familiar with the sort of problems that have to be solved on the server I am learning.

I think a lot of the criticism about people getting into it thinking that they can just port their client side experience to the server is valid. But the tone of so many seemingly anti-node posts turns a lot people off. I read more critical posts about node than I do positive ones because I know I will learn more. But sometimes it is not easy to cut through all the ego thumping and noob bashing. It would be nice to see the tone of the discussion shift, which I think it is starting to do, to what node is actually good at (in my opinion it seems to be acting as a glue for applications that require real-time).

Regardless, it works. I've started using Trello and I love it. Best organizational app I have used. Built in node. It works and I have not had a single problem with after two weeks of pretty heavy use.

So I don't think it just won the hype lottery, it has distinct advantages over Twisted and EventMachine, even if many of those advantages just have to do with relative accessibility and the ease of access provided by NPM.

It has hype because it has an involved and open community. Not just because it was lucky.