Tuesday, April 16, 2013

Node.js and open source trends

I spent some time with a friend from work after a debate on which languages to allow and which languages to not allow in our production system. I failed to explain that the language per se is not the issue - it is the best practices and the community culture that is developed around the language that is of importance. Chosing java vs php vs python vs nodejs _is_ a big deal.

My primary argument there was trying to explain the reasons why nodejs is not "yet another fad" but it is changing the way open source development happens, and I argued that we cannot leverage it unless/until we follow an open source model for writing our code.
I tried to explain that open source model doesn't mean to make your code open, public, useful, get users and contributors. As the creators of browserling (github/substack (the 2nd most prolific npm contributor) and github/petersk) showed writing your app in "open source model" is about architecting your app by keep on asking the question "what possibly reusable pieces if I had, would make the writing of my app trivial") - which results in you pushing out a stream of dozens of tiny (open source) modules - whose probably expected public utilization is fairly small - but still allows you to better architect your software and enable collaborative distributed development.

As always the community brain listened and an article popped up in hacker news today with a much better framing of this discussion:
The Node.js Community is Quietly Changing the Face of Open Source (caines.ca).

python:  29,720 packages / 22 years = 1351 packages per year
ruby:      54,385 packages / 18 years =    3022 packages per year
node.js  26,966 packages / 4 years =   6742 packages per year

Its a worthwhile read.

...
Interestingly there is a guy that is even more prolific npm contributor than substack.... tjholowaychuk
He has an interesting post explaining what he is missing in client side js componentization

No comments:

Post a Comment