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+---
+title: My love and hate relationship with Node.js
+url: my-love-and-hate-relationship-with-nodejs.html
+date: 2020-03-30T12:00:00+02:00
+type: post
+draft: false
+---
+
+Previous project I was working on was being coded in
+[Golang](https://golang.org/). Also was my first project using it. And damn,
+that was an awesome experience. The whole thing is just superb. From how errors
+are handled. The C-like way you handle compiling. The way the language is
+structured making it incredibly versatile and easy to learn.
+
+It may cause some pain for somebody that is not used of using interfaces to map
+JSON and doing the recompilation all the time. But we have tools like
+[entr](http://eradman.com/entrproject/) and
+[make](https://www.gnu.org/software/make/) to fix that.
+
+But we are not here to talk about my undying love for **Golang**. Only in some
+way we probably should. It is an excellent example of how modern language should
+be designed. And because I have used it extensively in the last couple of years
+this probably taints my views of other languages. And is doing me a great
+disservice. Nevertheless, here we are.
+
+About two years ago I started flirting with [Node.js](https://nodejs.org/en/)
+for a project I started working on. What I wanted was to have things written in
+a language that is widely used, and we could get additional developers for.  As
+much as **Golang** is amazing it's really hard to get developers for it.  Even
+now. And after playing around with it for a week I felt in love with the speed
+of iteration and massive package ecosystem. Do you want SSO? You got it!  Do you
+want some esoteric library for something? There is a strong chance somebody
+wrote it. It is so extensive that you find yourself evaluating packages based on
+**GitHub stars** and number of contributors. You get swallowed by the vanity
+metrics and that potentially will become the downfall of Node.js.
+
+Because of the sheer amount of choice I often got anxiety when choosing
+libraries. Will I choose the correct one? Is this library something that will be
+supported for a foreseeable future or not? I am used of using libraries that are
+being in development for 10 years plus (Python, C) and that gave me some sort of
+comfort. And it is probably unfair to Node.js and community to expect same
+dedication.
+
+Moving forward ... Work started and things were great. **Speed of iteration was
+insane**. For some feature that I would need a day in Golang only took me hour
+or two. I became lazy! Using packages all over the place. Falling into the same
+trap as others. Packages on top of packages.  And [npm](https://www.npmjs.com/)
+didn't help at all. The way that the package manager works is just
+horrendous. And not allowing to have node_modules outside the project is also
+the stupidest idea ever.
+
+So at that point I started feeling the technical debt that comes with Node.js
+and the whole ecosystem. What nobody tells you is that **structuring large
+Node.js apps** is more problematic than one would think.  And going microservice
+for every single thing is also a bad idea. The amount of networking you
+introduce with that approach always ends up being a pain in the ass. And I don't
+even want to go into system administration here. The overhead is
+insane. Package-lock.json made many days feel like living hell for me. And I
+would eat the cost of all this if it meant for better development
+experience. Well, it didn't.
+
+The **lack of Typescript** support in the interpreter is still mind boggling to
+me. Why haven't they added native support yet for this is beyond me?! That would
+have solved so many problems. Lack of type safety became a problem somewhere in
+the middle of the project where the codebase was sufficiently large enough to
+present problems. We started adding arguments to functions and there was **no
+way to implicitly define argument types**. And because at that point there were
+a lot of functions, it became impossible to know what each one accepts,
+development became more and more trial and error based.
+
+I tried **implementing Typescript**, but that would present a large refactor
+that we were not willing to do at that point. The benefits were not enough.  I
+also tried [Flow - static type checker](https://flow.org/) but implementation
+was also horrible. What Typescript and Flow forces you is to have src folder and
+then **transpile** your code into dist folder and run it with node. WTH is that
+all about. Why can't this be done in memory or some virtual file system?  Why? I
+see no reason why this couldn't be done like this. But it is what it is.  I
+abandoned all hope for static type checking.
+
+One of the problems that resulted from not having interfaces or types was
+inability to model out our data from **Elasticsearch**. I could have done a
+**pedestrian implementation** of it, but there must be a better way of doing
+this without resorting to some hack basically. Or maybe I haven't found a
+solution, which is also a possibility. I have looked, though. No juice!
+
+**Error handling?** Is that a joke?
+
+Thank god for **await/async**. Without it, I would have probably just abandoned
+the whole thing and went with something else like Python. That's all I am going
+to say about this :)
+
+I started asking myself a question if Node.js is actually ready to be used in a
+**large scale applications**? And this was a totally wrong question. What I
+should have been asking myself was, how to use Node.js in large scale
+application. And you don't get this in **marketing material** for Express or Koa
+etc. They never tell you this. Making Node.js scale on infrastructure or in
+codebase is really **more of an art than a science**. And just like with the
+whole JavaScript ecosystem:
+
+- impossible to master,
+- half of your time you work on your tooling,
+- just accept transpilers that convert one code into another (holly smokes),
+- error handling is a joke,
+- standards? What standards?
+
+But on the other hand. As I did, you will also learn to love it. Learn to use it
+quickly and do impossible things in crazy limited time.
+
+I hate to admit it. But I love Node.js. Dammit, I love it :)
+
+2023 Update: I hate Node.js!