RingoJS vs NodeJS

http://www.gmosx.com/blog/agVnbW9zeHIPCxIHQXJ0aWNsZRjh2gEM/ringojs-vs-nodejs

by gmosx • 16 years ago

46 37 16 years ago

gmosx.com

ErrantX2• 16 years ago

This was an OK piece till the last line. It's hardly a fair "vs" comparison if the aim is to call NodeJS a toy :)

gmosx9• 16 years ago

Don't judge the whole article by a single line...

btw, I have a special definition of toy:

6. Why not use NodeJS?

Well, NodeJS is a valid, if over hyped, solution. But it only helps you come up with a toy application. With 'toy' I mean an application that runs on your laptop or your staging server. For a production app you need deployment processes, multi version processes, system setup, server tuning, database scaling, backup processes, security policies, monitoring, profiling, admin console etc, etc. App Engine is the easiest way to go from toy to production (though Heroku-Node may provide a viable alternative).

(from http://www.gmosx.com/blog/agVnbW9zeHIPCxIHQXJ0aWNsZRipwwEM/o...)

ErrantX2• 16 years ago

> Don't judge the whole article by a single line...

If something is called A vs B I was would hope to see a list of how A is better than B. The only mention of NodeJS is pretty derogatory - it detracts from the promotion of RingoJS (which I found interesting)

amix2• 16 years ago

At Plurk.com we use node.js to provide comet updates to over 300.000 active clients at _once_. It's not a toy and it scales much better than most of other web-stacks I have tried. Read more here: http://amix.dk/blog/post/19490#Plurk-Instant-conversations-u...

fictorial2• 16 years ago

> ... managed to grab the attention of the developer community with cool marketing

I am not sure I would call a very good talk at jsconf "marketing" nor would I think of Ryan Dahl as "the new DHH" especially when Ryan has been known to "wish for less node.js hype".

It seems you dislike the attention node.js has been given instead of node.js itself.

> Contrast this to reports of NodeJS crashes.

This belies an assumption that node is production ready, even though it is at a very low version number, and when Ryan has stated that he would not dare put it into production standlone (not behind nginx).

Basically, I think you could have better promoted ringo.

gmosx9• 16 years ago

I don't dislike node.js (I don't agree with the direction). I just believe that RingoJS is a better solution for the majority of developers. (NodeJS may be better in niche applications like chat systems, a gaming server etc, even though I believe that technologies like GAE's forthcoming Channel API are even better)

rbranson• 16 years ago

You think an awful lot of your opinions. While confidence attracts, it came across to me as a bit blowhard-ish. ry and DHH didn't really talk big talk until they had walked a big walk. Perhaps you should focus on making a great product, let the "market" decide, and then focus on self-glorification?

EDIT: Oh yeah, I forgot to say... RingoJS looks great. Keep up the good work :)

ahoyhere3• 16 years ago

Yes, and the way to win people to your way of thinking is to tell them that it's because of "cool marketing" and that it is a "toy." Swell!

The OP's advice is sound: Stop making groundless rips on the other tool, and talk about why Ringo is better. Even "better" is totally subjective, because it depends on what you WANT from a tool.

But instead of saying "If you like x, you'll love Ringo!" you basically resorted to telling those of us who love node that we're stupid.

I frankly don't care. I've seen Ringo in action and I looked at the code, and I didn't like it at all. The points you gave it in its favor don't matter to me, either. I think node is vastly superior.

But, I'm not sniping about it in inflammatory blog posts. I just. don't. use. it. That's what you do when you don't like something: you don't use it.

Getting all aggro just makes you look childish, and causes people to ignore your message.

dalore• 16 years ago

> Unless you 've been living in a cage for the last year, you know that server side (better: 'general purpose') JavaScript is all the rage.

Apparently I've been living in a "cage". I think he meant cave, but nonetheless I haven't heard that server side JavaScript is all the rage.

chl3• 16 years ago

Things I like about RingoJS:

- Supports (most of) JavaScript 1.8 (thanks to Rhino): list comprehensions, destructuring assignments, expression closures &c. - those features [1] give the language a distinctly Pythonic feel and can lead to significantly more compact code.

- The CommonJS module system: works as expected. Not having a proper module system was one of the few drawbacks of Helma (the predecessor of RingoJS).

- Having full and easy access to the whole JVM ecosystem often makes it easy to bootstrap things, even if they're later rewritten in pure JavaScript.

- Some very exciting packages are starting to appear [2]; a current favorite of mine is berkeleystore (essentially an automatically-indexing JSON store): http://github.com/hns/berkeleystore#readme

- (Usually) laid-back, friendly & competent community (#ringojs!).

I wouldn't consider RingoJS "mature"; while it can be extremely useful in its current state (it certainly is for me) and the core functionality is stable, there's also a lot of (important) work left to do, especially when it comes to the "batteries".

In other words: For people who enjoy API and library design, RingoJS is an excellent project to contribute to right now ;-).

[1] Added to the language by Brendan Eich, more information here: http://developer.mozilla.org/en/new_in_javascript_1.8

[2] http://ringojs.org/wiki/Packages/

Kilimanjaro• 16 years ago

As a web developer I'd kill to code server-side in javascript.

Node is overly complex and overengineered for simple tasks.

Ringo runs on java which I hate, just a personal taste.

Kudos to both, just not what I need.

So while I keep an eye on SSJS, I can tell you there is no tool that suits web hobbyists like me right now.

olegp• 16 years ago

You don't have to deal with Java if you don't want to when using RingoJS. Also, have you tried http://www.akshell.com ?

RingoJS vs NodeJS

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