Josh Sherman
To start, let me put it out there that I’ve drank the kool-aid and have been doing a ton of hacking with Node.js (and soon enough, IO.js). I’m going to save the details for another post though. So an observation I’ve been making recently is that it seems like the majority of folks that code in Node seem to only be building web sites. Granted that doesn’t include the folks that build NodeBots or anything like that.
This became very apparent when my buddy Justin wrote a post about Using Command Line Arguments in a Node Script. The post blew up, generated a ton of traffic for him and was featured in some newsletters and even a fucking video! What blew both of our minds is how much traction, what seemed like a common knowledge topic, was able to generate. The fact is, Node is slated as a system for building web pages for a lot of people.
Don’t get me wrong (actually get me wrong and blow up my comments box) there are a ton of web frameworks for Node, but that doesn’t mean it needs to be typecast. Perhaps the issue isn’t even that it’s being typecast, it’s just that JavaScript as a whole attracts web developers and not necessarily folks that can command the entire stack.
For me, right now, Node’s occupying a sizable chunk of my toolbox but the bullk
of what I do with it is on the command-line. The asynchronous nature of Node
doesn’t always fare well when building scripts, but it can definitely be done.
If I can’t make it work by writing a shell script, I’m going to reach for Node,
most likely with the --harmony flag ;)
Using Node.js on the command-line? Post your projects below!
