Node.js vs Python vs Ruby

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Node.js

183.8K
155.9K
+ 1
8.5K
Python

238.5K
194.4K
+ 1
6.8K
Ruby

41.1K
21.2K
+ 1
4K

Node.js vs Python vs Ruby: What are the differences?

Introduction

This article compares the key differences between Node.js, Python, and Ruby, outlining specific features and characteristics that set them apart.

  1. Execution model: Node.js is a server-side JavaScript runtime environment that uses an event-driven, non-blocking I/O model. It excels at handling concurrent connections and processing large amounts of data in real-time. Python, on the other hand, is a general-purpose programming language known for its readability and simplicity. It offers a traditional, synchronous execution model. Ruby follows a similar synchronous execution model as Python, but with a focus on expressive and elegant code.

  2. Libraries and frameworks: Node.js has a vast ecosystem with numerous libraries and frameworks specifically designed for building scalable, high-performance web applications. Express.js, a popular minimalistic framework, is widely used for building web applications using Node.js. Python has an extensive collection of libraries, including Django and Flask, for web development, scientific computing, data analysis, and artificial intelligence. Ruby has its own set of libraries and frameworks, such as Ruby on Rails, which is renowned for its productivity and ease of use.

  3. Popularity and community support: Node.js has gained significant popularity due to its ability to handle real-time applications and asynchronous I/O. It has a large and active community with an abundance of resources and support. Python has a strong community with a long history and a wide range of applications. It is considered one of the most popular languages for scientific computing, machine learning, and web development. Ruby also has a dedicated community but is comparatively smaller than Node.js and Python.

  4. Scalability and performance: Node.js is well-suited for building highly scalable applications due to its non-blocking event-driven architecture. It can handle a large number of concurrent connections efficiently while minimizing resource consumption. Python, although not as performant as Node.js for highly concurrent tasks, offers excellent performance for most web applications and has extensive support for multi-threading. Ruby's performance, while generally slower than both Node.js and Python, is mitigated by its focus on developer productivity.

  5. Syntax and readability: Node.js, being a JavaScript runtime, benefits from the widespread adoption of JavaScript and its intuitive syntax. It is easy for web developers with JavaScript experience to transition to Node.js. Python is known for its clean and readable syntax, making it highly approachable for beginners and those interested in maintaining clean code. Ruby emphasizes elegant code readability and follows a more English-like syntax, which some developers find appealing.

  6. Integration with front-end technologies: Node.js, being JavaScript-based, seamlessly integrates into front-end web development. It allows for sharing code between the server and the client effortlessly, making it an efficient choice for full-stack web development. Python, although not as tightly integrated, has frameworks like Django that facilitate easy integration with front-end technologies. Ruby also offers various tools and frameworks that enable smooth integration with front-end technologies, particularly through Ruby on Rails.

In summary, Node.js is known for its non-blocking I/O model and scalability, Python excels in readability, versatility, and scientific computing, while Ruby emphasizes code elegance and productivity. Each of these languages has its unique strengths and communities, making them suitable for different types of web development projects.

Advice on Node.js, Python, and Ruby
Needs advice
on
Node.jsNode.jsPHPPHP
and
PythonPython

Hi, I have a project on my mind, and I need some help. First of all, I know it is all about personal preference, but I am a beginner in the back-end part. So, I am trying to figure out which language is better, for example, for user authentication and interaction between the users. Also, I don't know which framework is better for this work. My first thought was to use PHP, but after some research on the internet, I'm leaning towards Laravel. I will be grateful if you have some advice for me.

#newbie

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Replies (7)
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Node.jsNode.jsPHPPHP

First thoughts: * As a beginner you need to understand concepts first, all languages out there are great, each has it's own philosophy, each is better suited for a specific situation. Learn concepts first, do something, then you will understand the differences between them and why one should be chose over another for a task * As a project manager you want your project to come to an end. You will get lost in all the different solutions out there (and it's good), but don't get lost too far. Very often I see people getting lost in those debates and never achieving things, like someone writing a book that would still be choosing the font 6 months after (we've all done that it's ok, but we have to realise it)

Chances are your project can be equally good on any different stacks. I heard an interview of someone from Uber who said something like they started with python, went to node, went back to python and went to go, and with micro-services now they can have all of them all-together.

Last remark: from what I know Laravel is a framework for PHP, so it IS PHP. Just like Symphony for PHP, Express for Node.js, Koa for Node.js, Flask for Python ...

Now to answer your question :

  • PHP has a big community, it is great and easy to start with, and you will definitely will learn real object oriented structure
  • Node.js has a big community too, don't worry finding help will be as easy. It is less easy to start with but in my point of view it is a lot easier to keep on going with it on a long run. Why ? Because it's very easy to run a new project, and it executes javascript. How is it good ? Because chances are that your front will also be using javascript (React.js / View.js are crazy good). Thanks to that you will be able to master the language better because you will use it all day (and at first mastering one language is more valuable than barely knowing two) and you won't have to switch languages in your head when you code. And communication between front and back will be in json ... Which is crazy close to javascript.

Alexander is right, if you go with PHP take your time first to do things by yourself like building your own MVC, the benefit is huge and the risk is to never really be able to understand what's happening on a deeper level. (at some point you can switch to a framework though). He's also right on choosing a strongly typed language, problem is javascript is not. This is why, if you choose node, when you start being confident, add typesccript.

Hope it helps, good luck

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Octavian Irimia
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PHPPHP

Short answer, if it's a web project (and I guess it is) go with PHP and you can integrate NodeJs services later.

@adzaria (Ezra Fayet) gave a great answer and I'd like to emphasize the first part: As a beginner you need to understand concepts first. For me that means to understand the web, how servers and requests work, APIs and few others.

Now, I'd like to add few things so, this is the long answer:

Why PHP?

  • Everyone knows about the community - PHP is way older so you will find lots of resources and I am not only talking about learning - also lots of helpful tools and packages
  • PHP is great for OOP - not perfect, but with PHP7 got great - and if you are a beginner you want to know good OOP for your future. Let's say JavaScript's OOP is a bit strange; I will not get into details but, let's say "it's not by the book". You can still learn JavaScript for your front-end

Why not Python? Python got popular because of AI - don't use PHP for AI and don't use Python for web applications. I can elaborate a lot here but I guess you get the point.

Why not NodeJs?

  • NodeJs got popular because of sockets - and it works great, but as a service
  • Try to find a good and affordable hosting for NodeJs. How about for Python?
  • I would not ignore the security issues that it had and could appear. PHP is older and, therefore, wiser :)

Now, about a framework... is this a learning project or something that you need to do fast? My advice is to start a small project and not use any framework. However, you can use packages and inspire from a framework's architecture - Laravel is a good role model.

Why not start a big project? You will get distracted, get into details and product design stuff and get scared or border and abandon it. For your project you need an MVP - list of minimum required features that you put on paper - that you will complete. After that you can improve.

Good luck!

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somes kumar k
Member Technical Staff at Manage Engine, division of Zoho Corp · | 3 upvotes · 333.2K views
Recommends
on
Node.jsNode.js

you can choose Node.js Here are my points

Node.js is build over chrome’s v8 and its works on non blocking io. Node.js have huge community and great packages (npm) to help you out in most cases and makes development faster Node.js has been adopted by many multi dollar company Hope this helps😊

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Alexander Santos
Fullstack Developer at 3CON · | 2 upvotes · 329K views
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on
PHPPHP

The reason why i chose PHP is the amount of content you can find on the internet easily. As you quoted being a beginner, i think a more mature language would be better. And that's also another reason for following with PHP.

Python is simple and "mature", but it can be a bit hard to understand if you are a beginner. Python relies on heavy abstraction, and that's the reason behind it's simplicity. Python is an "easy to play, hard to master" language, i never recommend it to beginners. Also, one [maybe personal] reason why i don't like to use Python as back-end is: Python is very data-focused. So if your app has focus on business logic, Python wouldn't fit very well. And with that becomes an advantage, if your app has statistical focus, being data-focused or something like that, Python has huge advantage among all other languages due to many great tools the community has built.

About Node, it's like PHP, but less mature. It's as easy as PHP to find tools that can help you, for example, to abstract the database-connection's logic. But to find architectural-focused content, more advanced concepts, it's a lot harder. While that, Laravel's community, for example, has a lot of materials that involves those concepts.

Still, if you are really a beginner, i don't recommend using Laravel with PHP. Do things on plain PHP first, understand the reason behind using frameworks and Laravel's motivation.

Also, consider a strong-typed language first, those are considered more didatic, but less flexible.

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Recommends
on
Node.jsNode.jsPHPPHPPythonPython

You cannot choose between Python | PHP | NodeJS Since they are entirely for Different purpose.

In Bird view

Python - Large Scale Projects and if you want a job in big IT company.

Node.JS - Huge computing projects and if you want job in Silicon valley startup.

PHP - Cost Effective and If you want start a business in near future.

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Tarun Batra
Senior Software Developer at Okta · | 2 upvotes · 321.7K views
Recommends
on
DjangoDjangoPythonPython

Python, PHP and Node.js all are capable of being used to create good complex software. There are many examples of similar applications built on all of them. If I have to pick one, I would say consider Python and Django. It is fairly easy to develop web applications on top of this stack. Scaling and maintaining the application should also not be a problem given a lot of resources are available online.

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Recommends
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DjangoDjangoPythonPython

I have used Laravel, but with Django you can develop faster, as authentication and admin panel are configured out of the box. It users SQLite by default and you won't have to worry about the database in the begginning

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Kamal Makroum
Needs advice
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JavaJavaPythonPython
and
ReactReact

Hi everyone.

I am willing to build a used car sales platform, which will have a lot of stock/photos and will rely a lot on the back end functions and data generating. Java seems to be a good choice, but what other options can I consider that can also be easily scalable as well as a little faster to write?

Thank you

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Replies (2)
Recommends

Firstly, you must know that java and python are both amazing languages. But I recommend python mainly because of the variety of modules and packages available to do almost anything. If you are planning on adding graphs, you can use the matplotlib library and to add photos, use the pillow module. And just note that both of these aren't available by default, so you need to install them through pip.

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Ruslan Rayanov
Recommends

Hi, Kamal! I don't know if your question is still relevant. But I would like to introduce you to our solution, perhaps it will be useful for future projects. We have developed a web application constructor that can be used to create almost any website or application https://falconspace.site/. The entire development stack is reduced to SQL only. The platform is easy to configure and make subsequent changes if necessary.

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Muhammad Shaheer khan
Freelancer at Freelancer.com · | 9 upvotes · 604.9K views
Needs advice
on
DjangoDjangoMagentoMagento
and
Node.jsNode.js

Currently, I am a university student, and it is my second last semester with a major in Computer science. I want to start my career in full-stack web development. I know Python with Django + PHP with Laravel, and my focus is on learning MERN stack. I am a little bit confused as to which technology I should choose: Django or Magento or MERN stack.

#newbie

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Replies (2)
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ReactReact

I suggest you to go with MERN Stack (Mongo,express,react,Node). As you know python and django which is a plus point because you can use python and node as your backend and for front-end use react(easy to learn) and database of your choice.(Mongo or SQL)

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Moinul Moin
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Node.jsNode.js

GO For MERN Stack... brother

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Needs advice
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JavaScriptJavaScriptPythonPython
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RustRust

So, I've been working with all 3 languages JavaScript, Python and Rust, I know that all of these languages are important in their own domain but, I haven't took any of it to the point where i could say I'm a pro at any of these languages. I learned JS and Python out of my own excitement, I learned rust for some IoT based projects. just confused which one i should invest my time in first... that does have Job and freelance potential in market as well...

I am an undergraduate in computer science. (3rd Year)

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Replies (3)
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on
JavaScriptJavaScript

I would start focusing on Javascript because even working with Rust and Python, you're always going to encounter some Javascript for front-ends at least. It has: - more freelancing opportunities (starting to work short after a virus/crisis, that's gonna help) - can also do back-end if needed (I would personally avoid specializing in this since there's better languages for the back-end part) - hard to avoid. it's everywhere and not going away (well not yet)

Then, later, for back-end programming languages, Rust seems like your best bet. Its pros: - it's satisfying to work with (after the learning curve) - it's got potential to grow big in the next year (also with better paying jobs) - it's super versatile (you can do high-perf system stuff, graphics, ffi, as well as your classic api server) It comes with a few cons though: - it's harder to learn (expect to put in years) - the freelancing options are virtually non-existent (and I would expect them to stay limited, as rust is better for long-term software than prototypes)

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Recommends
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JavaScriptJavaScript

I suggest you to go with JavaScript. From my perspective JavaScript is the language you should invest your time in. The community of javascript and lots of framework helps developer to build what they want to build in no time whether it a desktop, web, mobile based application or even you can use javascript as a backend as well. There are lot of frameworks you can start learning i suggest you to go with (react,vue) library both are easy to learn than angular which is a complete framework.

And if you want to go with python as a secondary tool then i suggest you to learn a python framework (Flask,Django).

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Moinul Moin
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on
JavaScriptJavaScript

go for javascript, brother.

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Needs advice
on
JSONJSON
and
PythonPython

Hi. Currently, I have a requirement where I have to create a new JSON file based on the input CSV file, validate the generated JSON file, and upload the JSON file into the application (which runs in AWS) using API. Kindly suggest the best language that can meet the above requirement. I feel Python will be better, but I am not sure with the justification of why python. Can you provide your views on this?

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Replies (3)
Recommends
on
PythonPython

Python is very flexible and definitely up the job (although, in reality, any language will be able to cope with this task!). Python has some good libraries built in, and also some third party libraries that will help here. 1. Convert CSV -> JSON 2. Validate against a schema 3. Deploy to AWS

  1. The builtins include json and csv libraries, and, depending on the complexity of the csv file, it is fairly simple to convert:
import csv
import json

with open("your_input.csv", "r") as f:
    csv_as_dict = list(csv.DictReader(f))[0]

with open("your_output.json", "w") as f:
    json.dump(csv_as_dict, f)
  1. The validation part is handled nicely by this library: https://pypi.org/project/jsonschema/ It allows you to create a schema and check whether what you have created works for what you want to do. It is based on the json schema standard, allowing annotation and validation of any json

  2. It as an AWS library to automate the upload - or in fact do pretty much anything with AWS - from within your codebase: https://aws.amazon.com/sdk-for-python/ This will handle authentication to AWS and uploading / deploying the file to wherever it needs to go.

A lot depends on the last two pieces, but the converting itself is really pretty neat.

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Recommends
on
GolangGolang

I would use Go. Since CSV files are flat (no hierarchy), you could use the encoding/csv package to read each row, and write out the values as JSON. See https://medium.com/@ankurraina/reading-a-simple-csv-in-go-36d7a269cecd. You just have to figure out in advance what the key is for each row.

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Max Musing
Founder & CEO at BaseDash · | 1 upvotes · 288.2K views
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on
Node.jsNode.js
at

This should be pretty doable in any language. Go with whatever you're most familiar with.

That being said, there's a case to be made for using Node.js since it's trivial to convert an object to JSON and vice versa.

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Max Loua
FullStack Dev at Nouvelles Donnes · | 3 upvotes · 368.1K views
Needs advice
on
Node.jsNode.jsRailsRails
and
Rails APIRails API

Currently working on my company's new saas, the main goal is to manage content and user. I'm familiar with the rails framework and how it is easy to code and deploy. The thing is I'm the only dev on the project, and in terms of the tech stack, there is no preference. However, because Node.js is everywhere and there is enough dev on the market, I am stuck between choosing Rails or Node.js. I don't mind implementing Vue.js or React on the frontend, but I need a solid argument to explain to people that aren't necessarily tech-savvy as to why we should choose Rails over Nodejs.

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Replies (6)
Recommends
on
Node.jsNode.js

You are probably referring to ruby on rails for web development and nodejs for building the backend. Nodejs has frameworks such as express and next which not only provides a minimal code to build a backend but also gives the flexibility to try and experiment with the framework choices. For example you can have express framework + Passport for OAuth .... etc. The flexibility and the constant improvement of the language provides a good reason to opt for nodejs. Nodejs uses javascript which makes your code uniform when you are working full stack i.e react in front end and nodejs in backend.

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Rails APIRails API

I'd use the following metaphor to non-technical people. Rails is like a prepackaged toolkit, which can get most of the common tasks done fairly with ease. Whereas, node.js with whatever backend framekwork of choice, is like a DIY toolkit assembled by mix-and-match different tools in a large tool shop. Of course, at times DIY toolkit can do better on specific tasks. Given that you are the only dev on the project, I'd assume that the resource is fairly limited. And looks like you are not building some next-gen super duper fast smart application. So Just go with the prepackaged toolkit then. Rails is a very opinionated framework, there're pros and cons to it. But thanks to that, many of the gems are coded with it in mind. For example, they are all designed with same naming convention. Many will work well together out-of-box, for example devise and cancancan. Besides, many stuff are built in the framework. For example, logging utility, csrf protection, session encryption, etc. Yes, many of those stuff may not be useful or necessary at the beginning of the project life-cycle. However, down the road, there is a good chance you will need some of those. And the moment you realize that you already have it, it's so delightful. In addition, it's usually easier to debug a rails app than a node app in my experience. Personally, the cases where I would pick node.js over rails would be projects either require a) high-performance, or b) certain core functionality that has been implemented by some node packages but not by any ruby gems. In term of performance, node has a clear advantage over any other major web frameworks, except the ones built with go. It's simply a language feature. Node allows developer to easily write code that runs db query, external api calls, or other stuff of that nature in parallel. And that is THE MOST COMMON performance bottleneck of web applications.

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Francisco Quintero
Tech Lead at Dev As Pros · | 4 upvotes · 320.2K views
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Rails APIRails API
at

Rails is currently a very mature and feature complete framework.

It's the ideal one if you're the only dev for your project because you get so many things already baked-in the framework that you'd only need to deeply care about specific stuff.

I won't say any NodeJS framework isn't good enough but in my experience with NodeJS frameworks you have to code a lot of the things Rails already provides. There's many people in Twitter and IRL asking for a "Rails for JavaScript" framework.

And you know? In the early stages of any project we have to validate it first with real users/customers. With Rails you can get to production real quick and fast.

I'm going to mention some of the features you get from day 1 when you run rails new app_name:

  • File uploading with Active Storage
  • Rich text editor with Action Text
  • Emailing with Action Mailer
  • ORM, migrations, validations with Active Record
  • Web sockets with Action Cable
  • Internationalization
  • Modern frontend stuff with Webpacker

and more.

The JavaScript community is on its moment, growing and gathering more people everyday but the Rails community is also a big one and there's always going to be a Rails developer to hire whenever you're ready to hire someone.

I suggest you to go with Rails because is a good choice, gives you less things to worry about and it's a very good and mature framework.

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Dan Pickett
Co-Founder at Launch Academy · | 4 upvotes · 319.7K views
Recommends
on
Node.jsNode.js

I hate to admit it, because I loved my time with Rails (and I still love the framework), I have a hard time justifying new Rails applications these days. Core team has made some tragic design decisions, and developers just don't perceive it as being "cool" any more. The latter is a terrible metric for which to base a technology decision, but I think you'll find it more difficult to recruit additional engineers if you choose Ruby on Rails.

Without knowing too much of the details, Node/Express (ideally with Typescript) seems like a better solution here, given you'll be building out the front-end in Vue or React. It might be worth looking at NestJS, as it's the closest I've seen to a well-formed opinionated framework on the Node side of things. We're also fans of Objection ORM.

I hope that's helpful!

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Jean-Pierre Pommet
Recommends
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React on RailsReact on Rails

I need a solid argument to explain to people that aren't necessarily tech-savvy as to why we should choose Rails over Nodejs

Hi Max, it sounds like that you are proficient in both stacks and probably have a higher expertise in Rails (correct me if I am wrong) and since you are the only dev on a project, a good argument that comes to mind is probably the velocity and maturity (enterprise grade, battle tested in production) that Rails provide with proven success stories in the tech industry such as Airbnb, Stripes, Shopify to name a few. You can also make the argument that Rails is great to run the backend and React+Vue (and nodejs for tooling) is ideal for the front-end development (see or find companies example that use both). You can also build and show a prototype using both and share your experience which could help you find and forge the selling points to those non tech savvy folks, why not.

Eventually, are you going to have other developers on your project? if yes then you will need to take in account, onboarding and ramp up to contribution time when they are hired.

IMHO, I am not a fan of the debate Rails vs Nodejs, they are just tools at the disposal of the developer it's just a matter of figuring out what makes the most sense.

Let me know if you wanna discuss further, happy to help out!

ps: markdown preview on stack share... no good.

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Recommends
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Rails APIRails API

Rails has advantages over node.js (specifically express) when working a more complicated backend. While Express has some speed advantages to Rails, this is mitigated if your software is more CPU intensive.

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Needs advice
on
DjangoDjango
and
Node.jsNode.js

I have learned both Python and JavaScript. I also tried my hand at Django. But i found it difficult to work with Django, on frontend its Jinja format is very confusing and limited. I have not tried Node.js yet and unsure which tool to go ahead with. I want an internship as soon as possible so please answer keeping that in mind.

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Replies (7)
Recommends
on
DjangoDjango

If you are currently not working my first suggestion is to study both the frameworks and get a good grasp of those. If you didn't get confident with Django in the first place you should reconsider going back and study more. Get a video course with some code-along and produce some simple application you can showcase on your interviews. If you already took a course take a different one. Another trainer could be more effective and you could experience something new with different excercises. There are lots of both free and paid courses out there. When you will get confident with Django get your feet wet with Node.js because it surely worth it. Node is very different from Django from some perspective, it looks more like an asynchronous version of Flask to me. Be sure to have a good knowledge of ES6 first, because it will be really useful to understand the Node best practices. Study as much as you can now if you are not working. It will supercharge you for the future...

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Max Musing
Founder & CEO at BaseDash · | 10 upvotes · 877.3K views
Recommends
on
Node.jsNode.js
at

From my experience of the early startup world, a majority of companies these days use Node.js. Python and Go are the next biggest languages, but significantly smaller than Node.

However, if you're having trouble with the front end aspect of Django, using Node probably won't make that easier for you. You'll have a lot more options between front end frameworks (React, Vue.js, Angular 2) , but they'll definitely take more time to learn than Django's templating system.

Think about whether you want to focus on front end or back end for now, and make a decision from there.

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Recommends
on
Node.jsNode.js

I would suggest to go with js, it's the craze now when you enter into the stack it has variety of options and tools that you can adopt , and more than that the demand for js engineers is exponentially increasing and js can do magic in any type of application or architecture.

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George Krachtopoulos
Recommends
on
Node.jsNode.js

I had the same question myself a few months ago. I finally chose Node.js, and it was one of the best options I did back then. From when I started programming, I always believed that Python was for me the best language, secure and stable. However, it is not flexible for web development, there are more packages & libraries that are built and work only with JavaScript / TypeScript, and the community, resources & support is much bigger. I was also fascinated by the Django ORM, which I still am, & the admin interface. But those are things, that can be replaces by other tools, such as TypeORM, and the admin interface was not needed at all finally for my case. I know understand that Python is not the language that I should use everywhere and every time, but I can say that it is really good for algorithms, computer science, maths, statistics, analytics & AI. To be honest, I chose TypeScript (TS) with Node.js & Express, because it has auto-completion and "strict" code checking. I hope this helps you, and let you take a look at various aspects of choosing a programming language to work with.

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Yousuf Jawwad
Principal Software Architect at Breu Inc. · | 4 upvotes · 473.4K views
Recommends
on
JinjaJinja

Jinja is a template rendering engine and you will encounter some sort of template rendering engine in each language. Jinja is a pretty standard tool and almost every language has some sort of Jinja equivalent. Ruby has Liquid, Node has Nunjucks, Java has Jinjava, Go's default templating engine is easy to pick up if you know Jinja, Helm charts are easier to pick if know Jinja . So learning Jinja is a good thing.

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Recommends
on
DjangoDjango

Actually, you could get very good solution with implementing BE and admin panel with Django and FE with React.js or Vue.js. it will provide you a pretty flexible and powerful environment.

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Recommends
on
DjangoDjango

If you already know some django stuff you should keep that learning path. And for the job if you really want an internship you should learn to make rest APIs using django or nodejs, and a front end that consumes those APIs using some framework

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Needs advice
on
JavaJavaLuaLua
and
PythonPython

I am trying to make Roblox game which requires Lua. I quite don't want to go with Lua just because other tools just might let me do more projects later on. I heard that Python is most similar to Lua, but I am still not sure which tool to use. Java, I think it will help me with many stuff later on for websites, projects, and more!

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Replies (2)
Rafey Iqbal Rahman
Recommends
on
LuaLua
at

Since you are trying to make a Roblox game, you have no other option than to use Lua, since Roblox only allows coding in Lua. Yes, you've heard right, Python is identical and as easy as Lua, although Lua is easier than Python. Beginning from Lua and then escalating to Python is recommended. Java is only helpful when you are creating a heavy, big-budget, enterprise-level product, otherwise, Python would suffice.

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on
TypeScriptTypeScript

If you really hate lua check out roblox-ts, a tool that compiles typescript code into roblox lua. https://github.com/roblox-ts/roblox-ts

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Louai Hamada
Full Stack Web Developer · | 7 upvotes · 516.4K views
Needs advice
on
ExpressJSExpressJSNestJSNestJS
and
Node.jsNode.js

I'm planning with a small team to create an application which is a platform for restaurants. I'm on the backend almost alone currently. I'm going to use Node.js for that, and I'm very fond of TypeScript, and I worked before mostly with ExpressJS. The team may get bigger as the application becomes bigger and more successful, so I have the Scalability concern in mind now, and I was considering these options: 1) Use Node+Express+Typescript 2) Use Node+NestJs (which utilizes Typescript by default)

Option 2 is enticing to me because recently I came to love NestJS and it provides more scalability for the project and uses Typescript in the best way and uses Express under the hood. Also I come from an Angular 2 background, which I think is the best frontend framework (my opinion, and I know React quite well), which makes Nest feel familiar to me because of the similarity between Nest and Angular. Option 1 on the other hand uses Express which is a minimalist framework, very popular one, but it doesn't provide the same scalability and brings decision fatigue about what to combine with it and may not utilize Typescript in the best way. Yet, on the other hand, it is flexible and it may be easier to manipulate things in different ways with it. Another very important thing is that it would be easier in my view to hire Node developers with skills in Express than NestJs. The majority of Node developers are much more familiar with JavaScript and Express.

What is your advice and why? I would love to hear especially from developers who worked on both Express and Nest

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Replies (6)
Wender Machado
Full Stack Engineer at RG Sistemas · | 9 upvotes · 403.7K views
Recommends
on
NestJSNestJS

I highly recommend NestJS because:

  • It's a framework you already like;
  • Typescript is growing fast, being increasingly adopted in the community;
  • All layers are well defined, not needing to think much about the organization;
  • Great documentation;
  • Nest CLI increases the development speed and keep the pattern;

Only using express and knowing that project can grow, you'ill need to define the structure well so that it doesn't get out of control.

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Rhoger Anacleto
Developer at Magrathea Labs · | 5 upvotes · 403.7K views
Recommends
on
NestJSNestJS

Hi Louai,

I am quite sure that you know the answer to your problem. And I am here to help you to follow your arrow. I have worked with the most popular Nodejs frameworks and I can sure you that there's no stack better than NestJS (at all). Typescript is the best thing that happened with Javascript, this is a fact. Ans NestJS make a such wonderful job using all the best Typescript tools. NestJS is the most mature and organized API manager. Its modular dependence injection, the use of DDD, the solid idea of single responsibility, it's unit a and e2e testing support, its documentation is the most incredible work in the world of Nodejs. You won't regret choosing this framework, even if your application grows a lot. If you follow the documentation tips you will be able to create an amazing and organized application.

ps: I am not part of the NestJS team, I am just a guy tired of wasting time with dumb and bad Frameworks and its bad documentations. I find relief in NestJS with all the time it's saved to me, it helped me to improve my job and let me create great things with Nodejs.

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Recommends
on
NestJSNestJS

I would definitely suggest NestJs over other options because NestJs gives a lot of tooling. it would definitely suggest NestJs over other options because NestJs gives a lot of tooling & it gives a lot of functionality out of the box. If your team worked with angular 2+ then it will really easy to learn.

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Recommends
on
NestJSNestJS

First of all, my experience using either Node.js with Express or NestJS is not wide. I liked NestJS due to it's similarity to Angular, so when you know Angluar and like TypeScript you are going to love NestJS, it will be instantly very familiar and easy to use, it's adds a good structure to the project out of the box and well, it uses TypeScript, which is a more structured language - it's good for scalability. As for performance concern s - NestJS is based on Node, it just brings Angular's modular structure to it, so the question is more about how is the additional layer influences the performance - I cannot answer that.

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Recommends
on
NestJSNestJS

Hi, I'm in a similar position, but related to personal projects. After falling in love with few frameworks in the first day and rejecting them in day 2, I started learning nestJS last week. I currently develop personal side projects using cakephp, and I intend to migrate to nest + vue. This week I'm taking a nestJS course in order to be sure that this is what I want by praticing a little. If you didn't do it yet, I suggest you try to code a todo app or a similar example API using nest, so you can "feel" if this is indeed what you want to use in this larger-scale project.

Some of the characteristics that got my attention to nestJS are typescript, a lot of annotations/decorations, an oppinionated approach to organizing the project, nice documentation and discord, and it's evolution at npm trends shows me it's probably not going to vanish or get buggy anytime soon.

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Recommends
on
hapihapi

Have you checked out Hapi as an alternative? I'ts not Typescript by default though. If that doesn't seem too interesting, it sounds like you want to go with NestJS :)

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Needs advice
on
Node.jsNode.js
and
Spring BootSpring Boot

Hi, I am looking to select tech stack for front end and back end development. Considering Spring Boot vs Node.js for developing microservices. Front end tech stack is selected as React framework. Both of them are equally good for me, long term perspective most of services will be more based on I/O vs heavy computing. Leaning toward node.js, but will require team to learn this tech stack, so little hesitant.

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Replies (1)
Max Musing
Founder & CEO at BaseDash · | 10 upvotes · 501.1K views
Recommends
on
Node.jsNode.js
at

It's probably worth investing some time for your team to learn Node.js. There's very little overhead, especially with a framework like ExpressJS, so if your team is familiar with JavaScript it should be a quick process.

It handles I/O really well out of the box, and has a strong community with great open source libraries. Since you're using React on the front end, there's also some benefit to being able to use JavaScript throughout your stack.

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Decisions about Node.js, Python, and Ruby
awesomebanana2018

1. Type safety and inferred types

Go is type safe by default, which allows you to right more reliable code and have better developer tooling, plus with the := operator, you can initialize a variable without having to define its type because it automatically gets its type from the initial value.

2. Performance

There isn't much to be said here, but on most counts go beats both Python and Node.js on performance.

3. Documentation

I'm not talking about the Go language itself, although it does have good docs. I'm talking about Go's auto generated documentation tool, which allows people to document their packages easily and works amazingly with Go's type system.

4. Compiles to binary

If you are making a local program for somebody and they don't want to download the Go compiler, you can make Go into a native binary.

5. Built for the web

Go has built in Http libraries to rival Express.js and has a HTML/Text templating system.

6. Great Concurrency

Go utilizes Goroutines to help developers utilize multiple threads easily.

Conclusion

Go is an excellent choice for any system code, especially http networking and web backends.

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Andrew Carpenter
Chief Software Architect at Xelex Digital, LLC · | 16 upvotes · 401.3K views

In 2015 as Xelex Digital was paving a new technology path, moving from ASP.NET web services and web applications, we knew that we wanted to move to a more modular decoupled base of applications centered around REST APIs.

To that end we spent several months studying API design patterns and decided to use our own adaptation of CRUD, specifically a SCRUD pattern that elevates query params to a more central role via the Search action.

Once we nailed down the API design pattern it was time to decide what language(s) our new APIs would be built upon. Our team has always been driven by the right tool for the job rather than what we know best. That said, in balancing practicality we chose to focus on 3 options that our team had deep experience with and knew the pros and cons of.

For us it came down to C#, JavaScript, and Ruby. At the time we owned our infrastructure, racks in cages, that were all loaded with Windows. We were also at a point that we were using that infrastructure to it's fullest and could not afford additional servers running Linux. That's a long way of saying we decided against Ruby as it doesn't play nice on Windows.

That left us with two options. We went a very unconventional route for deciding between the two. We built MVP APIs on both. The interfaces were identical and interchangeable. What we found was easily quantifiable differences.

We were able to iterate on our Node based APIs much more rapidly than we were our C# APIs. For us this was owed to the community coupled with the extremely dynamic nature of JS. There were tradeoffs we considered, latency was (acceptably) higher on requests to our Node APIs. No strong types to protect us from ourselves, but we've rarely found that to be an issue.

As such we decided to commit resources to our Node APIs and push it out as the core brain of our new system. We haven't looked back since. It has consistently met our needs, scaling with us, getting better with time as continually pour into and expand our capabilities.

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Omran Jamal
CTO & Co-founder at Bonton Connect · | 7 upvotes · 556.8K views

We actually initially wrote a lot of networking code in Kotlin but the complexities involved prompted us to try and compile NodeJS for Android and port over all the networking logic to Node and communicate with node over the Java Native Interface.

This turned out to be a great decision considering our battery usage fell by 40% and rate of development increased by a factor of 2.

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Kyle Harrison
Web Application Developer at Fortinet · | 17 upvotes · 348.8K views

Node continues to be dominant force in the world of web apps, with it's signature async first non-blocking IO, and frankly mind bending speeds. PHP and Python are formable tools, I chose Node for the simplicity of Express as a good and performant server side API gateway platform, that works well with Angular.

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Octavian Irimia

Both PHP and Python are free but when it comes to web development PHP wins for sure. There is no doubt that Python is a powerful language but it is not optimal for web. PHP has issues... of course; but so does any other language.

Another reason I chose PHP is for community - it has one of the most resourceful communities from the internet and for a good reason: it evolved with the language itself.

The fact that OOP evolved so much in PHP makes me keep it for good :)

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As a small team, we wanted to pick the framework which allowed us to move quickly. There's no option better than Rails. Not having to solve the fundamentals means we can more quickly build our feature set. No other framework can beat ActiveRecord in terms of integration & ease-of use. To top it all of, there's a lot of attention paid to security in the framework, making almost everything safe-by-default.

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Hey guys,

My backend set up is Prisma / GraphQL-Yoga at the moment, and I love it. It's so intuitive to learn and is really neat on the frontend too, however, there were a few gotchas when I was learning! Especially around understanding how it all pieces together (the stack). There isn't a great deal of information out there on exactly how to put into production my set up, which is a backend set up on a Digital Ocean droplet with Prisma/GraphQL Yoga in a Docker Container using Next & Apollo Client on the frontend somewhere else. It's such a niche subject, so I bet only a few hundred people have got a website with this stack in production. Anyway, I wrote a blog post to help those who might need help understanding it. Here it is, hope it helps!

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Thomas Miller
Talent Co-Ordinator at Tessian · | 16 upvotes · 228.3K views

In December we successfully flipped around half a billion monthly API requests from our Ruby on Rails application to some new Python 3 applications. Our Head of Engineering has written a great article as to why we decided to transition from Ruby on Rails to Python 3! Read more about it in the link below.

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Jakub Olan
Node.js Software Engineer · | 17 upvotes · 647.1K views

In our company we have think a lot about languages that we're willing to use, there we have considering Java, Python and C++ . All of there languages are old and well developed at fact but that's not ideology of araclx. We've choose a edge technologies such as Node.js , Rust , Kotlin and Go as our programming languages which is some kind of fun. Node.js is one of biggest trends of 2019, same for Go. We want to grow in our company with growth of languages we have choose, and probably when we would choose Java that would be almost impossible because larger languages move on today's market slower, and cannot have big changes.

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Ítalo Vietro
VP Platform Engineering at UrbanSportsClub · | 7 upvotes · 225.2K views

We decided to use python to write our ETLs and import them into metabase via a lambda. Before python we tried using Go, but overall go was way more verbose than Python when writing the ETLs. Go also had some issues managing memory when using the S3 upload manager library. This was a deal breaker for us that made us switch to Python.

In the end the solution was much cleaner and maintainable.

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Pros of Node.js
Pros of Python
Pros of Ruby
  • 1.4K
    Npm
  • 1.3K
    Javascript
  • 1.1K
    Great libraries
  • 1K
    High-performance
  • 805
    Open source
  • 486
    Great for apis
  • 477
    Asynchronous
  • 423
    Great community
  • 390
    Great for realtime apps
  • 296
    Great for command line utilities
  • 84
    Websockets
  • 83
    Node Modules
  • 69
    Uber Simple
  • 59
    Great modularity
  • 58
    Allows us to reuse code in the frontend
  • 42
    Easy to start
  • 35
    Great for Data Streaming
  • 32
    Realtime
  • 28
    Awesome
  • 25
    Non blocking IO
  • 18
    Can be used as a proxy
  • 17
    High performance, open source, scalable
  • 16
    Non-blocking and modular
  • 15
    Easy and Fun
  • 14
    Easy and powerful
  • 13
    Future of BackEnd
  • 13
    Same lang as AngularJS
  • 12
    Fullstack
  • 11
    Fast
  • 10
    Scalability
  • 10
    Cross platform
  • 9
    Simple
  • 8
    Mean Stack
  • 7
    Great for webapps
  • 7
    Easy concurrency
  • 6
    Typescript
  • 6
    Fast, simple code and async
  • 6
    React
  • 6
    Friendly
  • 5
    Control everything
  • 5
    Its amazingly fast and scalable
  • 5
    Easy to use and fast and goes well with JSONdb's
  • 5
    Scalable
  • 5
    Great speed
  • 5
    Fast development
  • 4
    It's fast
  • 4
    Easy to use
  • 4
    Isomorphic coolness
  • 3
    Great community
  • 3
    Not Python
  • 3
    Sooper easy for the Backend connectivity
  • 3
    TypeScript Support
  • 3
    Blazing fast
  • 3
    Performant and fast prototyping
  • 3
    Easy to learn
  • 3
    Easy
  • 3
    Scales, fast, simple, great community, npm, express
  • 3
    One language, end-to-end
  • 3
    Less boilerplate code
  • 2
    Npm i ape-updating
  • 2
    Event Driven
  • 2
    Lovely
  • 1
    Creat for apis
  • 0
    Node
  • 1.2K
    Great libraries
  • 959
    Readable code
  • 844
    Beautiful code
  • 785
    Rapid development
  • 688
    Large community
  • 433
    Open source
  • 391
    Elegant
  • 280
    Great community
  • 272
    Object oriented
  • 218
    Dynamic typing
  • 77
    Great standard library
  • 58
    Very fast
  • 54
    Functional programming
  • 47
    Easy to learn
  • 45
    Scientific computing
  • 35
    Great documentation
  • 28
    Productivity
  • 28
    Matlab alternative
  • 28
    Easy to read
  • 23
    Simple is better than complex
  • 20
    It's the way I think
  • 19
    Imperative
  • 18
    Free
  • 18
    Very programmer and non-programmer friendly
  • 17
    Machine learning support
  • 17
    Powerfull language
  • 16
    Fast and simple
  • 14
    Scripting
  • 12
    Explicit is better than implicit
  • 11
    Ease of development
  • 10
    Clear and easy and powerfull
  • 9
    Unlimited power
  • 8
    It's lean and fun to code
  • 8
    Import antigravity
  • 7
    Python has great libraries for data processing
  • 7
    Print "life is short, use python"
  • 6
    Flat is better than nested
  • 6
    Readability counts
  • 6
    Rapid Prototyping
  • 6
    Fast coding and good for competitions
  • 6
    Now is better than never
  • 6
    There should be one-- and preferably only one --obvious
  • 6
    High Documented language
  • 6
    I love snakes
  • 6
    Although practicality beats purity
  • 6
    Great for tooling
  • 5
    Great for analytics
  • 5
    Lists, tuples, dictionaries
  • 4
    Multiple Inheritence
  • 4
    Complex is better than complicated
  • 4
    Socially engaged community
  • 4
    Easy to learn and use
  • 4
    Simple and easy to learn
  • 4
    Web scraping
  • 4
    Easy to setup and run smooth
  • 4
    Beautiful is better than ugly
  • 4
    Plotting
  • 4
    CG industry needs
  • 3
    No cruft
  • 3
    It is Very easy , simple and will you be love programmi
  • 3
    Many types of collections
  • 3
    If the implementation is easy to explain, it may be a g
  • 3
    If the implementation is hard to explain, it's a bad id
  • 3
    Special cases aren't special enough to break the rules
  • 3
    Pip install everything
  • 3
    List comprehensions
  • 3
    Generators
  • 3
    Import this
  • 2
    Flexible and easy
  • 2
    Batteries included
  • 2
    Can understand easily who are new to programming
  • 2
    Powerful language for AI
  • 2
    Should START with this but not STICK with This
  • 2
    A-to-Z
  • 2
    Because of Netflix
  • 2
    Only one way to do it
  • 2
    Better outcome
  • 2
    Good for hacking
  • 1
    Securit
  • 1
    Slow
  • 1
    Sexy af
  • 0
    Ni
  • 0
    Powerful
  • 605
    Programme friendly
  • 536
    Quick to develop
  • 490
    Great community
  • 468
    Productivity
  • 432
    Simplicity
  • 273
    Open source
  • 234
    Meta-programming
  • 207
    Powerful
  • 156
    Blocks
  • 139
    Powerful one-liners
  • 69
    Flexible
  • 58
    Easy to learn
  • 51
    Easy to start
  • 42
    Maintainability
  • 37
    Lambdas
  • 30
    Procs
  • 21
    Fun to write
  • 19
    Diverse web frameworks
  • 13
    Reads like English
  • 10
    Makes me smarter and happier
  • 9
    Rails
  • 8
    Very Dynamic
  • 8
    Elegant syntax
  • 6
    Matz
  • 5
    Object Oriented
  • 5
    Programmer happiness
  • 4
    Elegant code
  • 4
    Generally fun but makes you wanna cry sometimes
  • 4
    Friendly
  • 4
    Fun and useful
  • 3
    Easy packaging and modules
  • 3
    There are so many ways to make it do what you want
  • 2
    Primitive types can be tampered with

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Cons of Node.js
Cons of Python
Cons of Ruby
  • 46
    Bound to a single CPU
  • 45
    New framework every day
  • 40
    Lots of terrible examples on the internet
  • 33
    Asynchronous programming is the worst
  • 24
    Callback
  • 19
    Javascript
  • 11
    Dependency based on GitHub
  • 11
    Dependency hell
  • 10
    Low computational power
  • 7
    Can block whole server easily
  • 7
    Callback functions may not fire on expected sequence
  • 7
    Very very Slow
  • 4
    Breaking updates
  • 4
    Unstable
  • 3
    No standard approach
  • 3
    Unneeded over complication
  • 1
    Can't read server session
  • 1
    Bad transitive dependency management
  • 53
    Still divided between python 2 and python 3
  • 28
    Performance impact
  • 26
    Poor syntax for anonymous functions
  • 22
    GIL
  • 19
    Package management is a mess
  • 14
    Too imperative-oriented
  • 12
    Hard to understand
  • 12
    Dynamic typing
  • 12
    Very slow
  • 8
    Indentations matter a lot
  • 8
    Not everything is expression
  • 7
    Incredibly slow
  • 7
    Explicit self parameter in methods
  • 6
    Requires C functions for dynamic modules
  • 6
    Poor DSL capabilities
  • 6
    No anonymous functions
  • 5
    Fake object-oriented programming
  • 5
    Threading
  • 5
    The "lisp style" whitespaces
  • 5
    Official documentation is unclear.
  • 5
    Hard to obfuscate
  • 5
    Circular import
  • 4
    Lack of Syntax Sugar leads to "the pyramid of doom"
  • 4
    The benevolent-dictator-for-life quit
  • 4
    Not suitable for autocomplete
  • 2
    Meta classes
  • 1
    Training wheels (forced indentation)
  • 7
    Memory hog
  • 7
    Really slow if you're not really careful
  • 3
    Nested Blocks can make code unreadable
  • 2
    Encouraging imperative programming
  • 1
    Ambiguous Syntax, such as function parentheses

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What is Node.js?

Node.js uses an event-driven, non-blocking I/O model that makes it lightweight and efficient, perfect for data-intensive real-time applications that run across distributed devices.

What is Python?

Python is a general purpose programming language created by Guido Van Rossum. Python is most praised for its elegant syntax and readable code, if you are just beginning your programming career python suits you best.

What is Ruby?

Ruby is a language of careful balance. Its creator, Yukihiro “Matz” Matsumoto, blended parts of his favorite languages (Perl, Smalltalk, Eiffel, Ada, and Lisp) to form a new language that balanced functional programming with imperative programming.

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What are some alternatives to Node.js, Python, and Ruby?
AngularJS
AngularJS lets you write client-side web applications as if you had a smarter browser. It lets you use good old HTML (or HAML, Jade and friends!) as your template language and lets you extend HTML’s syntax to express your application’s components clearly and succinctly. It automatically synchronizes data from your UI (view) with your JavaScript objects (model) through 2-way data binding.
PHP
Fast, flexible and pragmatic, PHP powers everything from your blog to the most popular websites in the world.
JavaScript
JavaScript is most known as the scripting language for Web pages, but used in many non-browser environments as well such as node.js or Apache CouchDB. It is a prototype-based, multi-paradigm scripting language that is dynamic,and supports object-oriented, imperative, and functional programming styles.
React
Lots of people use React as the V in MVC. Since React makes no assumptions about the rest of your technology stack, it's easy to try it out on a small feature in an existing project.
Django
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