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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
-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!