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authorMitja Felicijan <m@mitjafelicijan.com>2023-07-08 23:26:39 +0200
committerMitja Felicijan <m@mitjafelicijan.com>2023-07-08 23:26:39 +0200
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1<!doctype html><html lang=en-us><meta charset=utf-8><meta name=viewport content="width=device-width,initial-scale=1"><link href="data:image/x-icon;base64,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" rel=icon type=image/x-icon><title>My love and hate relationship with Node.js</title><meta name=description content="Previous project I was working on was being coded inGolang."><link rel=alternate type=application/rss+xml title="Mitja Felicijan's posts" href=https://mitjafelicijan.com/index.xml><link rel=alternate type=application/rss+xml title="Mitja Felicijan's notes" href=https://mitjafelicijan.com/notes.xml><style>body{padding:1rem;max-width:760px;background:#fff;font-family:times new roman,Times,serif;line-height:1.35rem}hr{margin-block-start:1.5rem}h1,h2,h3{line-height:initial}footer{margin-block-start:3rem}table{max-width:100%;border-collapse:separate;border-spacing:2px;border:1px solid #000;border-left:1px solid #999;border-top:1px solid #999}blockquote{font-style:italic}table thead{background:#eee}td,th{border:1px solid #000;padding:4px;border-right:1px solid #999;border-bottom:1px solid #999;text-align:left}pre{text-wrap:nowrap;overflow-x:auto;margin-block-start:1.5rem;margin-block-end:1.5rem;padding:.5rem 0;border-top:1px solid #000;border-bottom:1px solid #000}pre code{line-height:1.3em}pre,code,pre *,code *{font-family:monospace;font-size:initial!important}img,video,audio{max-width:100%}header{display:flex;flex-direction:row;gap:3rem}nav{display:flex;gap:.75rem}.pstatus-orange{background:gold}.pstatus-green{background:#9acd32}.pstatus-red{background:#cd5c5c}@media only screen and (max-width:600px){header{flex-direction:column;gap:1rem}a{word-wrap:break-word}}</style><header><nav class=main><a href=/>Home</a>
2<a href=https://git.mitjafelicijan.com/ target=_blank>Git</a>
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6<a href=/index.xml target=_blank>RSS</a></nav></header><main><div><h1>My love and hate relationship with Node.js</h1><p>Mar 30, 2020<div><p>Previous project I was working on was being coded in
7<a href=https://golang.org/>Golang</a>. Also was my first project using it. And damn,
8that was an awesome experience. The whole thing is just superb. From how errors
9are handled. The C-like way you handle compiling. The way the language is
10structured making it incredibly versatile and easy to learn.<p>It may cause some pain for somebody that is not used of using interfaces to map
11JSON and doing the recompilation all the time. But we have tools like
12<a href=http://eradman.com/entrproject/>entr</a> and
13<a href=https://www.gnu.org/software/make/>make</a> to fix that.<p>But we are not here to talk about my undying love for <strong>Golang</strong>. Only in some
14way we probably should. It is an excellent example of how modern language should
15be designed. And because I have used it extensively in the last couple of years
16this probably taints my views of other languages. And is doing me a great
17disservice. Nevertheless, here we are.<p>About two years ago I started flirting with <a href=https://nodejs.org/en/>Node.js</a>
18for a project I started working on. What I wanted was to have things written in
19a language that is widely used, and we could get additional developers for. As
20much as <strong>Golang</strong> is amazing it's really hard to get developers for it. Even
21now. And after playing around with it for a week I felt in love with the speed
22of iteration and massive package ecosystem. Do you want SSO? You got it! Do you
23want some esoteric library for something? There is a strong chance somebody
24wrote it. It is so extensive that you find yourself evaluating packages based on
25<strong>GitHub stars</strong> and number of contributors. You get swallowed by the vanity
26metrics and that potentially will become the downfall of Node.js.<p>Because of the sheer amount of choice I often got anxiety when choosing
27libraries. Will I choose the correct one? Is this library something that will be
28supported for a foreseeable future or not? I am used of using libraries that are
29being in development for 10 years plus (Python, C) and that gave me some sort of
30comfort. And it is probably unfair to Node.js and community to expect same
31dedication.<p>Moving forward ... Work started and things were great. <strong>Speed of iteration was
32insane</strong>. For some feature that I would need a day in Golang only took me hour
33or two. I became lazy! Using packages all over the place. Falling into the same
34trap as others. Packages on top of packages. And <a href=https://www.npmjs.com/>npm</a>
35didn't help at all. The way that the package manager works is just
36horrendous. And not allowing to have node_modules outside the project is also
37the stupidest idea ever.<p>So at that point I started feeling the technical debt that comes with Node.js
38and the whole ecosystem. What nobody tells you is that <strong>structuring large
39Node.js apps</strong> is more problematic than one would think. And going microservice
40for every single thing is also a bad idea. The amount of networking you
41introduce with that approach always ends up being a pain in the ass. And I don't
42even want to go into system administration here. The overhead is
43insane. Package-lock.json made many days feel like living hell for me. And I
44would eat the cost of all this if it meant for better development
45experience. Well, it didn't.<p>The <strong>lack of Typescript</strong> support in the interpreter is still mind boggling to
46me. Why haven't they added native support yet for this is beyond me?! That would
47have solved so many problems. Lack of type safety became a problem somewhere in
48the middle of the project where the codebase was sufficiently large enough to
49present problems. We started adding arguments to functions and there was <strong>no
50way to implicitly define argument types</strong>. And because at that point there were
51a lot of functions, it became impossible to know what each one accepts,
52development became more and more trial and error based.<p>I tried <strong>implementing Typescript</strong>, but that would present a large refactor
53that we were not willing to do at that point. The benefits were not enough. I
54also tried <a href=https://flow.org/>Flow - static type checker</a> but implementation
55was also horrible. What Typescript and Flow forces you is to have src folder and
56then <strong>transpile</strong> your code into dist folder and run it with node. WTH is that
57all about. Why can't this be done in memory or some virtual file system? Why? I
58see no reason why this couldn't be done like this. But it is what it is. I
59abandoned all hope for static type checking.<p>One of the problems that resulted from not having interfaces or types was
60inability to model out our data from <strong>Elasticsearch</strong>. I could have done a
61<strong>pedestrian implementation</strong> of it, but there must be a better way of doing
62this without resorting to some hack basically. Or maybe I haven't found a
63solution, which is also a possibility. I have looked, though. No juice!<p><strong>Error handling?</strong> Is that a joke?<p>Thank god for <strong>await/async</strong>. Without it, I would have probably just abandoned
64the whole thing and went with something else like Python. That's all I am going
65to say about this :)<p>I started asking myself a question if Node.js is actually ready to be used in a
66<strong>large scale applications</strong>? And this was a totally wrong question. What I
67should have been asking myself was, how to use Node.js in large scale
68application. And you don't get this in <strong>marketing material</strong> for Express or Koa
69etc. They never tell you this. Making Node.js scale on infrastructure or in
70codebase is really <strong>more of an art than a science</strong>. And just like with the
71whole JavaScript ecosystem:<ul><li>impossible to master,<li>half of your time you work on your tooling,<li>just accept transpilers that convert one code into another (holly smokes),<li>error handling is a joke,<li>standards? What standards?</ul><p>But on the other hand. As I did, you will also learn to love it. Learn to use it
72quickly and do impossible things in crazy limited time.<p>I hate to admit it. But I love Node.js. Dammit, I love it :)<p>2023 Update: I hate Node.js!</div></div></main><footer><hr><div><h3>Want to comment or have something to add?</h3>You can write me an email at
73<a href=mailto:m@mitjafelicijan.com>m@mitjafelicijan.com</a> or catch up
74with me
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