I'm not as familiar with CPAN, but how is NPM significantly different?
As someone who used JS server-side from Netscape Livewire, to ASP JScript and even via Synchronet, and other JS runtimes... I've always appreciated the core language. Long before "The Good Parts" because Crockford only got a lot of coverage for what I already knew. Same goes for some recent adjustments regarding Object.create (and even inheritance chains in general).
JS at it's core is a decent language. ES5/ES6 enhancements make it very usable. Currently developing against Node 0.11.x --harmony, with a an es6ify for browser support. Given Node's very good async i/o interfaces, I've written a lot of bridges the past few years between systems that have trouble communicating directly.
Namely SOAP providers are a pain to consume in general a lot of the time. Not a problem to create a JSON endpoint in node that runs it fine. Need to process a huge XML or CSV file... Node is actually pretty nice... and can generally ship the final data where you need it.
Node is imho the ultimate service middle-ware... And to me, this extends to being the servers/services that web applications talk to... relaying to other backend systems/databases.
As someone who used JS server-side from Netscape Livewire, to ASP JScript and even via Synchronet, and other JS runtimes... I've always appreciated the core language. Long before "The Good Parts" because Crockford only got a lot of coverage for what I already knew. Same goes for some recent adjustments regarding Object.create (and even inheritance chains in general).
JS at it's core is a decent language. ES5/ES6 enhancements make it very usable. Currently developing against Node 0.11.x --harmony, with a an es6ify for browser support. Given Node's very good async i/o interfaces, I've written a lot of bridges the past few years between systems that have trouble communicating directly.
Namely SOAP providers are a pain to consume in general a lot of the time. Not a problem to create a JSON endpoint in node that runs it fine. Need to process a huge XML or CSV file... Node is actually pretty nice... and can generally ship the final data where you need it.
Node is imho the ultimate service middle-ware... And to me, this extends to being the servers/services that web applications talk to... relaying to other backend systems/databases.