anything that wasn’t nodejs could only handle 1 request at a time
that’s technically still true about most of nodejs’s direct competitors, even today. it ends up being hugely faster (per CPU) if most of your request is waiting on the database/filesystem/etc. It’s not faster if each request needs to hog the CPU, which is uncommon for what people normally use nodejs for. golang is probably the only mainstream competitor that is likely to do a better job at this one specific task. Everything else either has half-assed or non-existent support for async IO (python, php, ruby) or is very clearly not a direct competitor to nodejs (e.g. rust, zig, c) or I refuse to acknowledge it exists for lovecraftian reasons (Java).
I refuse to acknowledge it exists for lovecraftian reasons (Java).
The JVM is a pathway to abilities that many would consider… Unnatural. And quite honestly, the language has gotten less terrible over the past several years. The problem is that a good chunk of the software out there in the corpo world is still stuck on Java 8 and can’t migrate to 17/21/etc. without modifications and a fuckton of testing, and companies will drag their feet to avoid that amount of time and effort. But yeah, starting around Java 21 or so, they’re basically backporting random Kotlin features into the main language. But if you’re maintaining legacy JEE apps for something like WebLogic? Good fuckin’ luck. And good fuckin’ luck explaining Spring Boot to boomers.
…I’d still rather be working with Kotlin, though. (Currently trapped in Java 8 hell, and hopefully getting my team’s main codebase up to Java 17 spec in a couple of weeks because a vendor is demanding it.)
that’s technically still true about most of nodejs’s direct competitors, even today. it ends up being hugely faster (per CPU) if most of your request is waiting on the database/filesystem/etc. It’s not faster if each request needs to hog the CPU, which is uncommon for what people normally use nodejs for. golang is probably the only mainstream competitor that is likely to do a better job at this one specific task. Everything else either has half-assed or non-existent support for async IO (python, php, ruby) or is very clearly not a direct competitor to nodejs (e.g. rust, zig, c) or I refuse to acknowledge it exists for lovecraftian reasons (Java).
The JVM is a pathway to abilities that many would consider… Unnatural. And quite honestly, the language has gotten less terrible over the past several years. The problem is that a good chunk of the software out there in the corpo world is still stuck on Java 8 and can’t migrate to 17/21/etc. without modifications and a fuckton of testing, and companies will drag their feet to avoid that amount of time and effort. But yeah, starting around Java 21 or so, they’re basically backporting random Kotlin features into the main language. But if you’re maintaining legacy JEE apps for something like WebLogic? Good fuckin’ luck. And good fuckin’ luck explaining Spring Boot to boomers.
…I’d still rather be working with Kotlin, though. (Currently trapped in Java 8 hell, and hopefully getting my team’s main codebase up to Java 17 spec in a couple of weeks because a vendor is demanding it.)