
New MySpace done with Node + Express - tferris
http://expressjs.com/applications.html
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tferris
I just signed up:

\- extremely well designed form fields when signing up (kind of plain, reduced
and flat but more colourful than Metro)

\- in general very clean, subtle UI/design

\- low latency, responsive servers, feels snappy

Well done (from a webdev perspective, don't know if MySpace has still a valid
use case but I read that it should be more like Spotify now)

EDIT: after playing around a bit I have to stress again how responsive the
site feels => ultra low server response times

EDIT2: when watching a video and surfing around, the video stays as a small
inscreen window on the screen

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jonathanjaeger
Love the typography and the aesthetic, but the horizontal scrolling is killing
me. I just can't get into it.

~~~
jmcdonald-ut
That's how I feel. Design wise it's a great website, but I don't like the feel
of horizontal scrolling.

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djt
it could be made for tablet computing (ie swipe) rather than scroll with a
mouse

~~~
kbar13
yep

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jondot
What is really interesting to me is how are they doing persistence.

Node and SQLServer? Sounds very harsh. MongoDB? does that run on Azure?

My bet - their Node servers proxy to the old servers via dedicated API for
data. Node should be fine at doing these requests due to its async nature.

Even when you run with Express, to build such a feat requires a TON of
infrastructure (did you notice the X-Tracking, X-Response, etc headers?).

Much of the open source/public infrastructure in the Node ecosystem feels raw
(example: loggers. did you see how many loggers there are? do you think
they're production worthy?).

Though I would accept this and fix whatever I can (took me a while to find a
proper hierarchical logger that is also async, for example), I find it hard to
grasp how Microsoft would. This makes me assume they built everything from
scratch.

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tga
Node and SQL Server aren't as far from each other as you might think. In its
latest mood swing, Microsoft is actually promoting Node.

Look at WebMatrix, their simplified web development tool, I was surprised to
see that it supports Node: <http://www.microsoft.com/Web/webmatrix/node.aspx>

Same goes for Azure: <http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/develop/nodejs/>

~~~
jondot
Didn't say they're far from each other, of course it may be possible. I'm also
aware of Microsoft's support for Node and Azure, and their contributions to
Node.

Last time I wanted to integrate postgres with Node, I had flashbacks of
myself, 10 years ago, building an ORM before ORMs were that hip - this is true
for any of the impedance mismatch offered by taking an RDBMS and plugging it
with Node. I think there's something with using stores such as MongoDB with
Node that feels very right, almost essential.

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ErikAugust
I think Express will make me take a leap into Node.

~~~
nobleach
There is plenty of hate here and on Reddit for Node. My experience was fairly
painless. My unit tests ran incredibly fast... that was such a relief coming
from JRuby/Ruby. Otherwise, the language does feel a bit constraining. If
you've done plenty of work in JS though, it's not bad to get into. I really
loved Express.js for the project I did.

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pacomerh
Ok, everytime I read about Node it's usually made clear that is perfect for
websocket type of apps that can network and have multiple users interacting
between each other. So, in this case Myspace, seems to me like a regular
app/site that does normal operations. So, Hopefully someone can explain to me
if Node is also being considered as a replacement to the popular backend
languages to build regular sites?.

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dangrossman
It can be. Have you tried Trello, Geekli.st, Klout, Prismatic or Clipboard?
They're all Node too. It's had frameworks for developing web applications for
some years now.

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jaytaylor
Citing all those projects as Node successes may be flawed -- several of them
are largely considered to be engineering failures.

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dangrossman
Nobody said anything about successes. The question was whether anyone was
building regular websites (as opposed to just websocket/API stuff) with node.

~~~
jaytaylor
Fair enough.

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arrowgunz
TJ Holowaychuk ftw!

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tferris
Well said. TJ is basically one of those who's pushing Node and its ecosystem
to the max -- this guy is brilliant.

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trimbo
So they rewrote it in ASP.NET[1] and now rewrote it _again_ in Node? Can
someone explain to me how this helps their business?

[1] - <http://highscalability.com/myspace-architecture>

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citricsquid
The Myspace you're referencing to is not the current Myspace. The company was
bought for $35 million in 2011 by Specific Media and Justin Timberlake. Same
brand, different product.

[http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405270230458400457641...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304584004576415932273770852.html)

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tferris
Wondering how many startups are on Node nowadays

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camus
A lot ! i bet as much as startup using python or ruby as their backend. NodeJS
is not for everything so it would be interesting to know how they use it. I'll
be curious about what their persistance layer is too.

I like the new interface , it's cleaner that it has ever been , BUT if i get
pushed too much spammy stuffs i'll quit. Right now i dont see why i should use
that, all my connections are gone ...

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jmspring
NodeJS and Python Twisted have a commonality in terms of async development.

If you are wanting to stick with "one" language for both server and client-
side, then Node is a good choice.

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prezjordan
When does sharing code between the client and server actually happen? I can't
think of any use-cases.

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coenhyde
I just built and launched <https://popbasic.com/>. It shares the router,
controllers, actions and templates between the client and server. I have the
"frontend" that runs client and server which then talks to an api.

It works pretty good because i can serve out a full page request (good for SEO
and fast load times) then boot the same application on the client so
subsequent navigation is fast.

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tferris
Beautiful site, thanks for sharing!

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coenhyde
Cheers. I don't consider myself a designer. This is the first creative thing
i've done in 10 years, so it's good to know i can still make something that
looks good :).

