Why I Hate Node.js

Speaker able to get the audience listen to him. The speech was interesting, even if he stated several times to have numbers to prove fact, but the numbers didn't show anywhere.

Good talk; lacks a bit of meat to be great.

Poor talk: it felt like being trolled on Twitter, but in real life for 30 minutes.
I understand that JavaScript is not the perfect language, nor is node.js the silver bullet to solve all the problems in this world, but this speaker tried to convince me that threaded programming is easier than callback based programming and that his very subjective views of JavaScript and node.js are the correct ones.

I would have loved to see some of the numbers that backed up his claims, but he just showed Angus Croll's (brilliant) 'if Hemingway wrote JavaScript' post examples (http://byfat.xxx/if-hemingway-wrote-javascript) without giving any credit.

Furthermore: showing pretty graphs of numbers that are just pulled out of your hat is just unprofessional (referring to how code complexity in JS apparently grows really fast).

The speaker tried to be controversial, but it was just a poor delivery on "I don't like JavaScript and this is why" over 30 minutes.

When this talk begun I was saying to myself: wow I like the -let's find the weak spots- approach.

As I see it, the only point the speaker had is that the value of having a language widely known at its base doesn't mean that you are going to find GOOD programmers for it, because the only thing they get for free is the code syntax.

But in the end the talk was based on a bunch of platitudes. I missed the credits too.

apart from the lack of numbers backing what was being said, it often felt more like a collection of the first bad comments about nodejs you find online with a google search.

an example of how this kind of talk could be delivered backed by real life experience was the next one by Andrew Nesbitt.

Useless talk not backed by any fact.
Plus, very biased on personal taste.

To comparison, the talk by Andrew Nesbitt at the same conference was a MUCH better way where you should use NodeJS, and where maybe is not such a great fit.
Facts, experience and consistence.

All things that instead lacked in this talk.

I had fun with this talk but it was an attack to js instead of node... it could be a great possibility to deeply understand node and its limitations but it said nothing useful...

I do really apologize for not quoting and crediting source material and authors. I was too easy on this and I hope this is not too little and too late.
The writer/javascript stuff was taken from the blog post if Hemingway wrote JavaScript. It appeared also in HackerMonlty after I decided to mention it in my talk ( just saying). Growing complexity examples where taken from FENN BAILEY blog post "Node js a gigant step backwards"
Something also from "is nodejs wrong" by Nicolas Cannasse. And part of the questions to make some fun of javascript typing are takent from the famous "WAT" video ( you can find it on the internet :-) ).
I included this "late credits" in the notes on slideshare.
The quote
You want to use a programming language with the word "script" in it... and "java" in the other side
Is mine.

About the fact that I did not showed the numbers is that I didn't found any that I could be undisputed. The "Hello world" benchmark means nothing to me. My talk had the ambition of giving "points to think about" rather than bashing javascript and its ecosystem. I pointed out some oddities of js just because is the language that node relies on.
It seems I partially failed on giving an architectural and prospective talk, so thanks for the honest comments: if I had the chance to make this or a similar talk in the future I will pay more attention on those aspects.

Lot of questionable things, sometimes almost plain wrong, but he was kinda playing on this and the irreverent style made everything funny. Overall I liked it. Sam, you should run a spell checker on the deck.

Sam: Thanks for adding credits to your slide deck. Better late than never.

As for not showing any numbers that couldn't be disputed: I agree with you that "Hello world" benchmarks aren't useful. They are completely irrelevant. However, still making a point in a talk that can't be backed up is just as irrelevant IMO.

Twitter and Ruby were briefly mentioned in the comments after the talk: what people fail to see is that without having 1st built the prototype and later phase 1 of Twitter in Ruby, Twitter might never have happened. It allowed them to get to a critical mass first in a language and framework they were comfortable in. Then, through communication with (upset) users and a lot of hard work moving it over to scala/jvm, they managed to support the scale they are at.

You saying that CPS (Continuation Passing Style) is more complex than threaded programming is still purely subjective: a LOT of (good) developers are not great with multi-threaded programming. For me CPS feels like 2nd nature since I've been using it for over 7 years. For others it might not.
OOP felt wrong to a lot of people when it 1st appeared and it took nearly 2 decades for it to go mainstream. These days, it's the dominating style. This is not to say that it will be the last style ever and whenever new paradigms appear, a lot of developers will dismiss them because they are used to the status quo.

I could go on, but I better stop now. Just my 2 cents ;)

Gilles

A lot of concepts about the language and node not supported by any number... Concepts explained maybe valid for a lot of other languages... Completely missed the point according to me...
I didn't like this talk at all... No positive or negative feedback for my work, just time wasted.

The arguments against node.js where poor, but the talk was amazing.

I liked this talk mainly for the irriverent style of Sam, I could call this "The Sam's Show"! :)

IMHO this talk was aimed to put some "spicy" to the conf...

Epic achievement with little chances of success.
Great!!!

Really appreciating the speaker comment

A must have for a Node.js conference.