The Node.js Community Could Use Some TLC
01-22-2011 12:25 AMI think everyone here can agree that Node.js is awesome. Along with the commonjs effort, it has intensified the interest in javascript as a server-side language. The combination of asynchronous I/O by default and strong support for easy networking code has proven to be what lots of developers want in a platform. It's exciting and the community is growing every day.
But with growth comes growing pains. Node has matured as a project. It has a direction and a vision. This has happened organically and not everyone is aware that things are different. And I think we need to start broadcasting that direction and protecting that vision. I got motivated to write this blog post to offer some suggestions that could help ease some of the pain points of the community.
Most of the node community is centered around the mailing lists (nodejs and nodejs-dev). I've been following the lists since the beginning. First as a lurker, then a more and more frequent contributor. There is lots of activity and some very smart people hang out there and respond frequently to questions. What's even nicer is that Ryan Dahl and other core members actually post frequently to give good info on what's happening with node. In short, it supports the growing node community pretty well in my opinion. At least until recently.