
Fast Facts on Node.js - sliggity
http://bostinnovation.com/2010/12/28/fast-facts-on-node-js/
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spooneybarger
I find a number of the fast facts to be horribly misleading due to their
brevity...

"Node.js runs everything in ‘parallel’, meaning that all of your tasks can be
run at the same time. For example, let’s say you have a webpage that has 100
lines of code with 10 database calls. With a web server like Apache, these 10
database calls must be made in succession. While running node.js, you can run
all 10 of these database calls at once, which makes the webpage load faster."

errr... maybe...

"Current web servers must open many connections to interact with their
operating system (OS), while node.js only needs to open 1 connection. Each
connection costs the system memory, so using fewer connections is more
efficient and faster for the entire system."

there are many lightweight polling webservers like nginx, lighttpd etc

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kmccarth
Hey Spooneybarger, I wrote that article. I by no means intended to mislead, I
just wanted to keep it simple for a more mainstream audience to digest.

In programming or technical environments, there are literally thousands of
factors that come into play, so to avoid the inclusion of all of them, I kept
it brief.

Is there any different way you'd phrase the above?

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axod
I'd get rid of the 'node.js runs everything in parallel' BS unless you can
back it up with facts and numbers. It reads like complete rubbish atm.

Also I have no idea what you're talking about with 'connections to the OS'.
Sounds like more FUD to me.

    
    
      The code that makes up node.js is carried out by the V8
      javascript engine.  This engine (read: the component that
      processes javascript so that it can be understood by your
      operating system) is the same one Google uses in Chrome,
      which makes the processing of node.js very, very fast.
    

It should also be noted here, that it makes it very, very fast "when compared
to other js engines", however, it makes it pretty slow when compared to a ton
of other languages/runtimes. It's just misleading marketing speak to omit
that.

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ootachi
"It should also be noted here, that it makes it very, very fast "when compared
to other js engines", however, it makes it pretty slow when compared to a ton
of other languages/runtimes. It's just misleading marketing speak to omit
that."

Actually, I'd disagree on both counts. V8 isn't faster than contemporary
JavaScript engines anymore (although it's a tad faster than Safari's Nitro
engine, perhaps). However, V8 _is_ much faster than most of the other
languages used for web development: Ruby, Python, PHP, and Perl. The only
exception is Java.

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EGreg
Exactly. It's not about being faster than other Javascript engines, it's about
compiling down to Machine code, and being way faster than all the other
scripting languages.

Unless you use Java, C, C++, etc you would do better with Node.js

~~~
viraptor
Still bytecode interpreted not native, but Node.js wasn't better:
[http://blog.mysyncpad.com/post/2073441622/node-js-vs-
erlang-...](http://blog.mysyncpad.com/post/2073441622/node-js-vs-erlang-
syncpads-experience) (at least cpu / memory -wise)

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nestlequ1k
Fast Fact: due to a v8 bug, a Node.js process currently only supports a max of
1.9gb of RAM

<http://code.google.com/p/v8/issues/detail?id=847>

~~~
EGreg
That's fine if you are running a 16-core machine with 16GB of ram, isn't it?
Just have one Node.js process per core.

~~~
nestlequ1k
Yep, easy enough to workaround. Seems like a needless limitation however.
Would be nice if someone on node.js core (or v8 team at google) would try to
fix that bug.

Also wonder what other bugs are going to emerge as a result of trying to use a
client side app on the server.

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johnm
Do note clearly that V8's garbage collector is fairly slow (think old Java GC)
so having more instances of node with smaller heaps is a good idea anyways.

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EGreg
Argh, I was afraid of that. Can we have something that is a hybrid of
refcounting and stop-the-world GC? I read some nice academic paper a few years
ago about how people made a GC that combined the benefits of refcounting and
stop the world.

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kmccarth
also, if anyone is an expert on node, please email me at kevin at
bostinnovation dot com so I can fill in some of the holes in this article

~~~
DTrejo
Stop into #node.js on irc.freenode.net, and see what feedback they have (if
you haven't already).

