I use node.js for batch processing: it's just fantastic. Instead of ugly bash scripts that are absolutely unreadable and therefore unmaintainable, I get to write beautiful Javascript and lightning fast JSON processing and transformation. This is an area where node.js really shines and that is not often mentioned.
As for client-server development, I think the future is going back to the client. Instead of "dumb clients", what we have now are extremely powerful and fast clients. It's much cheaper to send raw data to the client and compute it there, since as a web developer you pay for server CPU, but not for client CPU. (Of course, it's a little wasteful since the computation happens many times instead of one; but you can always send the results back to the server for caching, if that worries you).
> What makes node.js "shine" more at batch processing more than every other language on the planet?
Because every other language on the planet is not Javascript...?
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Edit: maybe I should clarify? The only other solution (that I know of) to write Javascript for the server is Helma; I've tried it and it kind of works but it's very clumsy. Is there another simple way to write JS on a Linux box?
Comments
I use node.js for batch processing: it's just fantastic. Instead of ugly bash scripts that are absolutely unreadable and therefore unmaintainable, I get to write beautiful Javascript and lightning fast JSON processing and transformation. This is an area where node.js really shines and that is not often mentioned.
As for client-server development, I think the future is going back to the client. Instead of "dumb clients", what we have now are extremely powerful and fast clients. It's much cheaper to send raw data to the client and compute it there, since as a web developer you pay for server CPU, but not for client CPU. (Of course, it's a little wasteful since the computation happens many times instead of one; but you can always send the results back to the server for caching, if that worries you).
> I use node.js for batch processing: it's just fantastic. Instead of ugly bash scripts that are absolutely unreadable and therefore unmaintainable
I am confused: if you don't like bash scripts why in science's sake did you keep using them instead of one of the billion alternatives out there?
> This is an area where node.js really shines and that is not often mentioned.
Because it's nonsensical. What makes node.js "shine" more at batch processing more than every other language on the planet?
> What makes node.js "shine" more at batch processing more than every other language on the planet?
Because every other language on the planet is not Javascript...?
- - -
Edit: maybe I should clarify? The only other solution (that I know of) to write Javascript for the server is Helma; I've tried it and it kind of works but it's very clumsy. Is there another simple way to write JS on a Linux box?
- - -
Edit2: maybe I should not clarify.
Node.js is great because bash is ugly. Way to go indeed.