Why is node.js unstable?

Question

Today is 9/17/2011. Today, what are the main reasons why Node.js is unstable, or not ready for use as an open server for everyone.

A few things I came up with:

• Applications will be closed if unhandled exceptions occur
• Libraries are still young and change a lot.

Now I plan to create an e-commerce site using Node.js, Mongoose, Express and forever - and I need good reason to consider so that I can be ready for what is coming. I would also like to learn how easy it would be to hack, but I'm not too worried about it yet, because it seems incredible if I follow standard methods such as disinfecting the input.

Why is Node.js unstable?

Answer 1

There are some

• node.js does not work stably in windows
• node.js is just not as tried and tested as nginx say.
• the main API is not frozen yet (although it is unlikely to change).

The reasons you mentioned are false.

Applications will be disabled if unhandled exceptions occur

Oh sure. Unhandled exceptions (remember that exceptions are exceptional) server crash and burn. That is why in production we have strong protection against this. We use node clusters that restart any instances of your application if one of them works.

Libraries are still young and changing a lot

Not really. Most libraries that are stable are truly stable. There are many libraries that carefully warn you that they are under development / unstable / not ready for production. The only difference is that in the open source community, you get access to a lot more libraries that are not ready yet. Where, as in closed-source communities, you see libraries only when they are ready.

Honestly, though 0.4.x is stable on linux, and I would use it. I would still probably also use node.js as load balancing in front of another node, and then use nginx, but this can be considered risky.