

How I Met Node.js - daleharvey
http://arandomurl.com/2012/01/31/how-i-met-node.html

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fingerprinter
My experiences run very, very counter to this articles. While I keep coming
back to Node as I want to use it, I can't for these reasons:

1\. I always have trouble updating to latest release. Something like Node,
with how fast it moves, needs something like RVM or virtualenv. And it does,
NVM. Problem is that NVM doesn't seem to work have the time, or rather,
getting a specific version of Node is broken more often than not.

2\. Javascript really is a ghetto. The language is ugly and it is really hard
to get around. I've taken to writing Coffeescript, which is a way around it,
but I end up having to read Javascript somewhere along the line and it,
plainly, sucks. And worse than writing JS, is reading someone else's JS. My
god, there are some really badly written libraries out there!

3\. The whole setup thing. I already mentioned that something like RVM or
Virtualenv is needed, but I want to reinforce this point. It is REALLY needed.

I'm the type of developer that doesn't like fighting my tools; I'm a maker,
not a hacker. So, I like my tools to work so I can concentrate on my problem
domain. When I have to fight my tools, I have less focus towards what I'm
trying to build....and that starts to irritate me. When Node lets me focus on
my problem, I'll gladly use it.

~~~
dspillett
While node is stabilising and getting a fair amount of production use out
their, its rapid growth over the last year or more means that if you use it
now you should (IMO) probably still consider yourself an early adopter at this
point and expect a few problems like that.

The high-profile users of node will no doubt have someone almost dedicated to
testing new versions before rolling them out to developers and test
environments, and have a battery of automated testing solutions to run new
versions by with existing projects before new node versions get anywhere near
production. You don't say what scale you've tried with node on, so I'm
assuming a relatively small scale (possibly just yourself playing) rather than
your experiences being team based ones - which means you won't have the luxury
of a person/team dealing with that sort of upgrade integration hassle for you
so you.

I've tinkered with node myself but on a very small scale: just myself playing
with a few bits thus far. I've had minimal hassle with upgrades, but as I
don't have any mentionable codebase that I'm dragging with me at each upgrade
a new version can just be a fresh install for me.

