“Node.js is one of the worst things to happen to the software industry” (2012)
Anybody can criticize a language or platform, but it doesn&#x27;t mean much if there aren&#x27;t any better alternatives.<p>This article presents an extreme conclusion without much supporting evidence, so it&#x27;s pretty pathetic that this made the front page. Nobody even uses callbacks anymore now that we have Promise and async&#x2F;await.<p>Yes, Javascript isn&#x27;t the best language (though ES6 improves tremendously on ES5). But right now it&#x27;s the only language you can use in the browser (aside from languages like Clojurescript that compile to Javascript). The biggest advantage of Node.js is that you can reuse the same code on the client and server, and thus it&#x27;s ideal for creating universal single-page web apps. Being able to reuse the same code on the client and server is a massive advantage that can&#x27;t be understated.<p>Also, Node.js with Nginx is more scalable out of the box than Ruby on Rails, Python&#x2F;Django, PHP, etc. Hell it&#x27;s comparable to Java, which is incredible for a dynamic language. The difference is, you can write a Node.js web application 10x faster than the equivalent application in Java, and with a drastically smaller codebase (less code = less code to maintain). These days developer time is the biggest cost.<p>These rants come off as coming from either (1) back-end developers who never touch UI code or anything on the client-side (not where Node.js thrives) (2) armchair commentators who don&#x27;t actually have to get shit done in terms of building and deploying web apps on deadlines, and thus have the luxury of criticizing everything without presenting realistic alternatives.<p>&gt; &quot;There are only two kinds of languages: the ones people complain about and the ones nobody uses.&quot; -Bjarne Stroustrup