Will server-side JavaScript take off? Which implementation is most stable? [closed]

Question

Does anyone see server-side JavaScript taking off? There are a couple of implementations out there, but it all seems to be a bit of a stretch (as in, "doing it BECAUSE WE CAN" type of attitude).

I'm curious to know if anyone actually writes JavaScript for the server-side and what their experiences with it have been to date.

Also, which implementation is generally seen as the most stable?

Answer 1

I like to read Googler Steve Yegge's blog, and recently I came across this article of his where he argues that Mozilla Rhino is a good solution for server-side JS. It's a somewhat sloppy transcript, you might prefer to watch the video of the talk. It also offers a little bit of insight on why he thinks server-side JS is a good idea in the first place (or rather, why he thinks that it's a good idea to use a dynamic language to script Java). I thought the points he makes were convincing, so you might want to check it out.

A while earlier, he also posted something about dynamic languages in general (he's a big fan of them), just in case you were wondering why to use JS at all.

Answer 2

Why would you want to process something in Javascript when you can process it in PHP or ASP.NET which are designed specifically for this task?

Perhaps because JavaScript is a more powerful programming language than those two? For example, it has functions as first-class data types and support for closures.

Steve Yegge has blogged about porting Ruby on Rails to server-side JavaScript as an internal project within Google ("Rhino on Rails"). He did it because he likes Rails but using Ruby isn't allowed within Google.

Answer 3

Before it was acquired by Google, JotSpot used server-side JavaScript to let you query their database and display your pages. They used Rhino to do it. CouchDB uses server-side JavaScript to create views of their database.

As you can see from these examples, a great way to use JavaScript on the server is for plugins. One of the reasons it's used is that you can create a very isolated sandbox for people to run their code in. Also, because of the way that JavaScript as a language works, you can provide a user tooling specifically honed to the tasks your users need to complete. If you do this right, users don't need to learn a new language to complete their tasks, a quick glance at your API and examples is enough to get them on their way. Compare this to many of the other languages and you can see why using server-side JavaScript to provide a plugin architecture is so enticing.

A secondary popular solution, one which can be seen through a project like Jaxer, is that a common problem of web applications that do client-side validation is that, since JavaScript is easily bypassed in the browser, validation has to be run once again on the server. A system like Jaxer allows you to write some validation functionality that is reusable between both server and client.