PurpleJS – An alternative to Node.js for Java projects

I particularly don&#x27;t find the problem it solves appealing. The power of Node comes specifically from its everything async programming model, Javascript is just a detail.<p>So what&#x27;s the point in taking away the good part, and keep the cumbersome one? If you just want to program a Synchronous server in the JVM,just stick to Java.

How does this relate to Nashorn?<p>With something like Avatar-JS [1] you can even run some NodeJS apps without modifications on the JVM.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;avatar-js.java.net" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;avatar-js.java.net</a>

Why do people think async code is complicated and keep trying to replace it?<p>I think there are just people who will never understand or fully grok the beauty, power and simplicity of functional programming and will always seek to replace it. I feel sorry for them.

Isn&#x27;t use case proposed by PurpleJS covered by Vert.x already? Or am I missing anything?

I wonder if LucasArts is happy with that logo :-) The image and the font brought up some good memories.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Day_of_the_Tentacle" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Day_of_the_Tentacle</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com&#x2F;images&#x2F;I&#x2F;514Q95XGV8L.jpg" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com&#x2F;images&#x2F;I&#x2F;514Q95XGV8L...</a>

I have seen several similar things that essentially use existing Java libraries or the libraries themselves offer it (Javascript).<p>* jooby [1]<p>* Vert.x [2]<p>* Rapidoid (I can&#x27;t find the exact link where JS was used) [3]<p>I&#x27;m just not entirely sure why you would trade a language that is generally much safer for one that is known to be problematic at scale particularly since Java 8 has lambdas so you can do callback async style if you like. I mean I suppose you could use typescript but at that point why not stick with Node and if you need JVM stuff just make some sort of microservice to access it from Node.<p>If it is a learning thing than (as Java is complicated) than Clojure is far better option (I&#x27;m always amazed how easy it is to learn any Lisp as syntax becomes a non issue).<p>[1]: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;jooby.org&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;jooby.org&#x2F;</a><p>[2]: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;vertx.io&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;vertx.io&#x2F;</a><p>[3]: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.rapidoid.org&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.rapidoid.org&#x2F;</a>

Interesting offer, would be great to have some benchmarks comparison to see the value of it. Do you happen to have some?

I&#x27;m just not sure I see the value... and in the end, not sure it will work out any better than the DLR attempts with .Net... It&#x27;s interesting, just not sure I see the value. The Java runtime is about 60mb to download, then the extras for this... vs Node&#x27;s runtime download under 14mb with a similar amount of library downloads for a given project.<p>That doesn&#x27;t include the disconnect from the rest of the JS ecosystem which has centered around npm at this point (at least for the package repository itself, baring the yarn front end).

This could be pretty cool. So in theory, all the Java, Scala, etc servers out there can wire up an isomorphic single page app without calling out to a Node process.<p>Once the docs are written... <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;purplejs&#x2F;purplejs&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Embedding" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;purplejs&#x2F;purplejs&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Embedding</a>

This reminded me of Nodyn[1], a Node-compatible JVM implementation, which it appears is no longer actively developed.<p>[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;nodyn&#x2F;nodyn#notice" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;nodyn&#x2F;nodyn#notice</a>

I didn&#x27;t see any mention of Rhino. Does he know that existed (exists?)?

Why don&#x27;t any of the examples use Java?... Even the examples on GitHub, none of it looks any different than a Node.js project.

Is it correct to say that this is like JRuby, but with JavaScript in place of Ruby?

Does it use Rhino (to compile JS into bytecode)?

simple question - can it work with npm dependencies out of box?