

Ryan's Deck from Code Conf (aka the plan for nodejs on windows) - shawndumas
http://nodejs.org/codeconf.pdf

======
lucisferre
Perhaps I'm being a bit short sighted but as someone who is a .NET and Windows
programmer I don't really understand the impetus to do this. The majority
programmers in the Windows ecosystem who would choose to use Node under
Windows instead of *nix are typically going to fall under the same group as
those who haven't a clue what Node is yet and probably wouldn't bother moving
outside the .NET ecosystem for web development.

The people and organizations which choose to use Windows for web tend to make
a choice to embrace the entire Microsoft ecosystem and those who don't are
generally be happy to use the tools that make sense for Node.

~~~
there
stack overflow uses .net and windows development but uses linux servers and
unix tools for a lot of the backend stuff. maybe it's a new trend.

[http://highscalability.com/blog/2011/3/3/stack-overflow-
arch...](http://highscalability.com/blog/2011/3/3/stack-overflow-architecture-
update-now-at-95-million-page-vi.html)

~~~
lucisferre
Right, but this is my point, unless there is a compelling reason for the
technology of Windows to run Node.js over _nix, most competent Windows dev
teams will choose a hybrid environment and use_ nix to run Node.

So perhaps I am being short sighted and there is a compelling technical reason
to run Node.js on Windows, but if it's just having a market of devs who don't
want to develop on *nix then I don't see it.

------
nl
People might complain that this is unimportant, but look at it this way:

Node.js is increasingly being used for infrastructure-type services, often
involving custom protocols. It would be useful if these services were cross
platform (for integration with legacy Windows programs if nothing else).
Having a good Windows deployment story (ie, non Cygwin) is vital for this.

------
sriramk
This is pretty awesome. There are not too many pieces of high-performance
networking code which do the right thing on *nix (epoll/kqueue/etc) and IOCPs
on Windows.

------
dstein
This is disheartening. I would much rather see Ryan do more productive and
interesting things than cater to Windows users.

~~~
dualogy
Slide #21: "Bert Belder is the man behind enemy lines doing the Windows work.
We need more help."

After he spent 2 years on this project with great success, how come you
suddenly know better than him what he should or shouldn't do next?

Breaking into Windows on a solid, non-hacky basis will be crucial to bring
NodeJS to the next level. As some other poster said, this will further enlarge
the node community and result in even more/better/faster utilities, libs,
fixes etc.

Look at it this way, Enterprises are stuck on Windows and their devs don't
have a choice about that... but they _can_ influence the development platform
that their upcoming projects will run on. Many of those will be _highly_
tempted to break out of the ASP.NET routine. Maybe server-side JS for most is
just a shiny toy... maybe they don't "get non-blocking IO" or will resort to
old learned threading/concurrency patterns when they shouldn't... but who
cares?

Also think about server-side products. FogBugz, HelpSpot, SharePoint ... all
provided not just hosted on the cloud but often requested to be installable by
admins locally or in a private company-owned/hosted "cloud". Basing future
products in those categories on NodeJS will require smooth Windows support to
achieve wider acceptance and adoption.

You cannot tell enterprises to change their corporation-wide OS policy... but
if you can _run_ your stuff on it, you don't have to embrace the whole rest of
the MS stack, they don't care about that one bit.

~~~
eropple
Only peripherally related, but re: non-blocking IO: at least one framework
already exists to do that within the .NET ecosystem (Manos). It's by no means
popular (yet--I'm hoping it catches a little fire as it matures), but it does
already exist. ;-) Node is much further along, though, and would be a nice
tool to have in my toolbox when I'm working on one of my Windows machines.

(IMO, however, the "behind enemy lines" crap is just that. These projects
would be a lot better off if they left the poo-flinging to Groklaw and Roy
Schestowitz. You want to talk about disheartening...)

~~~
dualogy
I'm 99% confident from their general writing, tweeting, blogging etc. that
this was highly highly Tongue-in-Cheek and irony referencing exactly the poo-
flinging you now bemoan. Look how much thought they invest in making it work
well on Windows. They wouldn't show that kind of motivation if they (or at
least this Bert) truly believed Win was a piece of crap.

~~~
eropple
It totally could be - they've always seemed like very reasonable guys to me.

------
mpakes
All well and good except the move to use binaries in NPM. I really, really
hope this doesn't become common on the UNIX side..

