

Ryan Dahl (Creator of Node.js) is doing an IAMA on Reddit - davej
http://www.reddit.com/r/node/comments/h1m2o/i_am_ryan_dahl_creator_of_nodejs_ama/

======
KirinDave
He shouldn't have done it. He's saying some outrageously bizarre technical
things. For example, he claims a big advantage of node libraries is their
"purity", but it's pretty obvious that he doesn't know what that word means¹.
See:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/node/comments/h1m2o/i_am_ryan_dahl_c...](http://www.reddit.com/r/node/comments/h1m2o/i_am_ryan_dahl_creator_of_nodejs_ama/c1ry524)

He also says he wishes JavaScript didn't have garbage collection, like C. He
says, "Too many people ignore the "no garbage collection" feature when
designing languages." But javascript's object model really wouldn't allow
manual memory management.

The final weird thing is talking about Akka in node, but admits he's had
limited success. What I don't think he gets is how the scheduling for actors
works. It's actually an alternative paradigm to the callback soup that Node
uses.

¹ _When we're talking about a programming language, it's not unfair to ask
that we not mix up terms already used in the programming world._

~~~
sjs
You're being voted down because they are not actually that outrageous.

"purity of non-blocking libraries": the context makes it explicitly clear he
is _not_ talking about side effects and referential transparency. If I were
more mean spirited I might say that you don't understand how to parse a
sentence or that words can take on different meanings in different contexts.
I'm certain that's not actually true but that is effectively the conclusion
you came to in the same situation. Pretty silly right?

If you followed the Node mailing lists you'd see that there are questions
about allocating gigabytes of memory with Node, and Ryan has to shrug and say
"Sorry, Node isn't for you because v8's memory management doesn't facilitate
such use". Also he mentions that he likes to win benchmarks and the GC gets in
the way of that. Whether or not winning benchmarks is useful is debatable, but
given that constraint it's obvious you don't want GC. He wants _a_ scripting
language without GC not JavaScript specifically. Give the guy some credit, he
is a C programmer by trade.

Didn't read the stuff about Akka and can't comment on that but after the first
2 criticisms I'm not going to waste my time.

~~~
KirinDave
> If I were more mean spirited I might say that you don't understand how to
> parse a sentence or that words can take on different meanings in different
> contexts. I'm certain that's not actually true but that is effectively the
> conclusion you came to in the same situation. Pretty silly right?

Ahh so let's just play word games then? Let's just call callbacks "allocators
of effect" and functions "parameterized callbacks" and see how clear our
writing is. Even if we ignore this gaffe, it implies Ryah thinks the world is
struggling under the burden of blocking libraries. "Oh no," our hypothetical
wage slave might cry, "this library unexpected uses a thread. Now my job is
impossible." It's strange to even claim that a feature in 2011. Maybe Node's
needs a Paul-Tyma-figure to come snap them out of their implicit assumption
that asynchronous libraries are always faster; they are not.

But what he said wasn't true. You can write loops in Javascript, so libraries
could enter into infinite loops which would stop the machine from progressing.

> Whether or not winning benchmarks is useful is debatable, but given that
> constraint it's obvious you don't want GC. He wants a scripting language
> without GC not JavaScript specifically.

He was _not_ asking or direct allocators and deallocators, if you read the
quote, he was talking about removing memory management entirely. I'm not sure
how Node's functions could lexically close over anything unless you start
introducing a lot of new notions that current node programmers don't care
abut.

> Give the guy some credit, he is a C programmer by trade.

I want to. I really want to. But then he writes blog posts like this
([http://antirobotrobot.tumblr.com/post/5109182039/overlapped-...](http://antirobotrobot.tumblr.com/post/5109182039/overlapped-
i-o)) and severely undermines my confidence in him. When he was just playing
around with a side project I thought it was a cool hack. Now that he's got a
corporate backer it's a little surprising he isn't bothering to up his game.

------
gsivil
Content-free so far. (7:11 PM east coast)

~~~
davej
Yeah, perhaps I should have waited until he answered a few more questions
before submitting this.

~~~
gsivil
It is not your fault. Thanks a lot for posting that

------
mjs
[http://www.reddit.com/r/node/comments/h1m2o/i_am_ryan_dahl_c...](http://www.reddit.com/r/node/comments/h1m2o/i_am_ryan_dahl_creator_of_nodejs_ama/c1ryf6d)

Q: What are your favourite tech sites? (hacker news, /r/programming, etc.) A:
hacker news

------
pibefision
Why not a IAMA here?

~~~
makmanalp
It's not part of the culture I think. IAMAs are a reddit thing. My educated
guess is that if it was a less notable person, it would be downvoted and
flagged into oblivion.

------
endergen
IAMA?

~~~
davej
It's basically a chance for people to ask other people questions e.g. "I am a
fireman, AMA (ask me anything)"

It originates from here: <http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/>

~~~
redthrowaway
Not to be pedantic, but I saw AMAs on 4chan long before I saw them on reddit.

~~~
davej
Cool, I didn't know that. I stand corrected.

