MEAN vs. LAMP for the future of programming
LAMP diehards take note: The flexible simplicity of MongoDB, ExpressJS, AngularJS, and Node.js is no joke
LAMP diehards take note: The flexible simplicity of MongoDB, ExpressJS, AngularJS, and Node.js is no joke
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Two of the hottest open source web dev tools butt heads over your next project
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The Internet is a pit of epistemological chaos. As Peter Steiner posited -- and millions of chuckles peer-reviewed -- in his famous New Yorker cartoon, there's no way to know if you're swapping packets with a dog or the bank that claims to safeguard your money. To make matters worse, Edward Snowden has revealed that the NSA may be squirreling away a copy of some or all of our packets, and given the ease with which it can be done, other countries and a number of rogue hacker groups may very well be following the NSA's lead.
The transition from cutting-edge curiosity to practical workhorse is not one that many technologies make. Yesterday's precocious upstarts often fail to live up to their Version 0.1 promise -- not so for the technologies that make up the fiercely acronymized MEAN stack.
Computer languages have a strange shelf life. The most popular among them experience explosive growth driven by herding behavior akin to that of the fashion industry. But when they fade from the spotlight, something odd happens. Instead of disappearing like a pop song or parachute pants, they live on and on and on and on. The impetus behind this quasi-immortality? It's often cheaper to maintain old code than to rewrite it in the latest, trendiest language.
Every programmer has a favorite language or two. JavaScript lovers are the luckiest these days because their language is taking over the Internet and the Internet is taking over the world. Those whose hearts reside elsewhere in the programming language world, however, are stuck. They can either stay on the sidelines and curse the relentless juggernaut of HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and Node.js, or they can find a way to love it.
For several decades, enterprise developers had to support one simple platform: computers on desks. Then the smartphone came along and we had to find ways to deliver the data to a smaller, more mobile rectangle. All of these challenges, however, prepare us little for the next big platform to come: the automobile.
In the 1980s, the easiest way to start a nerd fight was to proclaim that your favorite programming language was best. C, Pascal, Lisp, Fortran? Programmers spent hours explaining exactly why their particular way of crafting an if-then-else clause was superior to your way.
In the history of computing, 1995 was a crazy time. First Java appeared, then close on its heels came JavaScript. The names made them seem like conjoined twins newly detached, but they couldn't be more different. One of them compiled and statically typed; the other interpreted and dynamically typed. That's only the beginning of the technical differences between these two wildly distinct languages that have since shifted onto a collision course of sorts, thanks to Node.js.
It's a classic Hollywood plot: the battle between two old friends who went separate ways. Often the friction begins when one pal sparks an interest in what had always been the other pal's unspoken domain. In the programming language version of this movie, it's the introduction of Node.js that turns the buddy flick into a grudge match: PHP and JavaScript, two partners who once ruled the Internet together but now duke it out for the mind share of developers.
Watch out! The coder in the next cubicle has been bitten and infected with a crazy-eyed obsession with a programming language that is not Java and goes by the mysterious name of F.