NodePDX NodeJS perspective:
Developers “like a full-stack, end-to-end, one-language development model.”
Ward Cunningham pointed to above slide at NodePDX, intuiting a new era of computing. Pic credit is due Allen Wirfs-Brock, Mozilla Research Fellow, ECMAScript standards committee, who was also at Node PDX. I enjoyed discussing with Allen the new Ambient Computing transition era intuited.
Allen sketched out how the browser is a transitional technology, incubating a new canonical era computing language JavaScript, just as C was for the PC era, C# Java was for the transition period with the browser. As move into the App economy on smart phones, tablets the browser is being removed.
I first heard Steve Gillmor mention IOS would be back fitted into OSX. Gizmodo wrote The End of Mac, after seeing OSx Mountain Lion and referenced Windows 8 Metro. Apps are simpler on smaller devices, more convenient on desktops and run more securely in VM sandboxes.
Allen added it’s easier for the industry to coalesce around JavaScript and fix what’s not right, both on the client and server, rater than coalesces around another language.
On the server side, Joyent developer Ryan Dahl created Node.js — or simply Node. Node is getting endorsements from established companies such as Microsoft and Yahoo, as well as from smaller ventures.
Geared to network application development, the platform is built on the Google Chrome V8 JavaScript engine and features an event-driven, nonblocking I/O model that advocates say make it ideal for data-intensive, real-time applications running across distributed devices.
Not everyone agrees a server-side framework should not be written in JavaScript. Ted Dziuba, a senior technical staff member at eBay, has posted a blog post in which he declares, “Node.js is cancer.” Ted calls Node a “scalability disaster waiting to happen.” Node.js disobeys the Unix way.
Ryan and others see a very bright community teasing out solutions to Ted’s concerns as we go. Applications WordSquared.com and Clipboard.com being case studies proving scalability.
