The future of server side JavaScript
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The future of server side JavaScript
@olegpodsechin#froscon 20.08.2011
Why use JavaScript on the server?
Language of the browser Competition amongst browser vendors means
increased performance Code reuse between the server and client, no need for
context switching Dynamic language
No unnecessary constraints, allows one to mix procedural, object oriented and functional styles
Allows for meta programing Data in JSON, no marshalling reduces amount of code
Why use JavaScript on the server?
Lingua franca of the web Widely accessible, even to beginning developers Widely available in terms of platforms Decent IDE support
Closures work well with asynchronous, real time web
Diverse, active, growing community – http://communityjs.org
We are stuck with it for the foreseeable future
It's Trendy
ServerJS != Node
Engines Environments Platforms Frameworks
Engines
1996 SpiderMonkey (Mozilla) 1998 Rhino (Mozilla) 2008 Nitro/SquirrelFish (Apple) 2008 V8 (Google) 2011 Chakra (Microsoft) 2012 Nashorn (Oracle)
Rhino
JavaScript 1.7 Interpreted or compiled to Java bytecode,
allows for continuations Includes new and old features like destructuring
assignment (var {a, b} = x) and E4X Easy access to Java classes Recent patches improve performance, e.g.
InvokeDynamic in Java7
V8
EcmaScript 5 Compiles to native code – fast! Extended via native libraries Primarily targets the web browser
CommonJS
Modules - 1.0, 1.1, Async/A Packages - 1.0, 1.1 Console System Unit Testing – 1.0
Binary - A, B, C, D, E, Lite, F IO - A, B, C Filesystem - A, B JSGI - 0.2, 0.3 HttpClient – A, B
CommonJS modules
// math.jsexports.add = function(a, b) { return a + b; }
// server.jsvar add = require('math').add;console.log(add(2, 2));
// client.js???
CommonJS packages
// package.json{ "name": "hello", "version": "0.1.0", "description": "Hello world package", "keywords": ["hello", "world"], "author": "John Smith <[email protected]>", "main": "./lib/hello.js", "dependencies": {"whatever" : "1"}, "engines" : ["v8", "node", "rhino"],}
Future of CommonJS
http://groups.google.com/group/commonjs Node mostly ignored CommonJS AMD split out into separate mailing list UncommonJS
https://github.com/kriskowal/uncommonjs
Environments
1996 Netscape Livewire 1998 Helma (Rhino) 2007 AppJet (Rhino) 2008 CouchDB / Couch Apps (SpiderMonkey) 2008 RingoJS (Rhino) 2009 Narwhal (Rhino, V8, SpiderMonkey) 2009 Node (V8) 2010 Akshell (V8) 2011 Wakanda (Nitro)
Over 30 in total http://wiki.commonjs.org/wiki/Implementations
Sync vs. Async
http.get(url1) + http.get(url2)
Sync vs. Async
function add(callback) { http.get(url1, function(response1) { var part1 = response1.data; http.get(url2, function(response2) { var part2 = response2.data; callback(part1 + part2); } }}
Interoperability
Pure JavaScript CommonJS modules can run in any environment Templating, parsing, formatting, encoding – what
else? Anything that does I/O must expose either a
synchronous or an asynchronous API Dictates the style of interface exposed by higher
level packages, e.g. database driver, ORM
API vs. Implementation
Asynchronous, implement Node API Node RhiNodeII - https://github.com/lhofhansl/RhiNodeII SpiderNode - https://github.com/zpao/spidernode Node.NET - https://github.com/dnewcome/Node.net
Synchronous, implement CommonJS API Ringo - https://github.com/ringo/ringojs Narwhal - https://github.com/280north/narwhal Common Node –
https://github.com/olegp/common-node
Common Node
Implements a number of synchronous CommonJS specifications on top of Node
Uses node-fibers Uses co routines or multiple stacks within the same
process not a fork or a hack
Google's Traceur to support latest language features Bridges the gap between Ringo and Node, sync and
async Fibers, HTTP proxy code examples & benchmarks
Platforms
Node Joyent, Heroku, Nodejitsu, Nodester, Nodesocket,
CloudFoundry Ringo
Erbix, AppEngine & any other Java platform Akshell
Frameworks
ServerJS is missing a Rails like framework Asynchronous
DIY using Connect, Express etc. with Node Less of a problem, since Node is often used as glue
Synchronous DIY using JSGI, Stick etc. with RingoJS Lack of a solid framework more of an issue
Trends
Wider adoption Front end developers First time developers - http://www.codecademy.com
Enterprises moving off legacy systems Java, PHP
New operating systems Windows, mobile devices (but not WebOS)
Trends
Web IDEs, XaaS Cloud9 – http://www.cloud9ide.com Akshell – http://www.akshell.com
Compile to JavaScript languages CoffeeScript, AltJS http://altjs.org & http://notjs.org
Extensible systems, crowd sourced functionality Think WordPress plugins + platform Locker Project http://lockerproject.org
Thank you!
Questions?
@olegpodsechin