Ask HN: Do you use Node for production APIs? How is your experience?

3 points by me_me_mu_mu 3 years ago | 1 comment

Trying to compare options like Node, Ruby/Rails, and Django against something like Java/Spring, Elixir/Phoenix, or Go.

I'm wondering if anyone here is using Node for their production APIs. What is the scaling story like? What about the costs and maintenance involved?

I've got experience with Go and Java, but I've only ever used Node for scripts and super simple internal APIs. I don't have experience with Ruby/Rails nor Django, and used Elixir many years ago and enjoyed it but I'm not sure if I want to invest my time on it.

Interested to hear your thoughts. My biggest pros for Java/Go is that it is tried and tested. I've heard many people use Rails and that it is super fast to build stuff with it. The cons is that it is hard to find people who can use Java/Go well enough, and I've worked on too many projects with spaghetti code and horribly designed architecture. A dynamic language seems easier to refactor or just re-write, compared to these.

iamsandelius 3 years ago |

Just pick the one you like the most. It won't be the language nor framework that will be your bottleneck or your project will succeed or not.

I usually reach for ruby first when I face a new project. But that's just because I like the language a lot.