openstack team mailing list archive

[Jan Drake <jan_drake@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

I was speaking generally not specifically about this issue.  Sounds like you're taking this personally.

See prior comment on developers and languages.  This is not about which language is better: that's just crazy talk. :)

Adding node.js is clearly not onerous. And if most shops don't have JS experience on staff I imagine interfaces and UX must be pretty sterile and difficult to create so I think JS isn't an onerous skill to expect the community to be able to bring to bear.

As I mentioned below I am not in favor of willy nilly addition of technology solutions.  Just warning the community to be aware about RTW and NIH and to use as much leverage as possible to accelerate the delivery of the platform.

You see, I'm a customer.  Give me the best product possible.  I'll put up with one more dependency in my deployment process.  I already have thousands of them.

Jan




On May 31, 2012, at 10:32 AM, Caitlin Bestler <Caitlin.Bestler@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> 
> Jan Drake wrote:
> 
> 
>> For what it's worth, I've noticed a generally myopic trend towards python only.  Node.js can play many very good roles as an
>> implementation strategy for various openstack capabilities, especially at the edge.  I was excited to see it being included. 
>> There's a balance to be struck in optimizing the development community, especially for core openstack, around a limite
>> set of languages; however, I've never trusted an engineer who's ever only coded (or still only codes) in one language.
> 
>> So, consider this a nudge in the direction of being open to additional technology sets and languages (not blindly randomly or chaotically).
> 
> If we were launching the project from scratch and the question was which language would be better, node.js or python, I would
> Strongly advocate node.js.
> 
> However, I do not think there is anything "myopic" about wanting to limit the dependencies that the host OS must provide
> to support your project, or the amount of learning that is required before a team of developers can be proficient with the
> code base for a project.
> 
> Once a second major ecosystem is introduced, whether node.js or just a different python threading library, all of the release
> decisions become more complex from that day forward. It is not just when to support a new version of the python libraries,
> but which python *and* node.js libraries will be supported in the next project release. That extra release work must be undertaken
> by each OS distribution that supports openstack.
> 
> Any shift in the ecosystem will be a major undertaking, it should only be considered when the costs of not doing it become onerous.
> 
>