Ryan Dahl
TLDR: Ryan Dahl is an software developer known for creating Node.js, an open-source, cross-platform runtime environment for JavaScript, introduced in 2009. His work revolutionized server-side scripting, making JavaScript a dominant language in backend development.
Ryan Dahl was born in 1981 and began his career as a software engineer focusing on web technologies and server development. His creation of Node.js stemmed from the need for a lightweight, asynchronous runtime capable of handling concurrent requests efficiently. This innovation leveraged Google’s V8 JavaScript Engine and introduced an event-driven, non-blocking I/O model.
Node.js was officially released in 2009 and quickly gained traction among developers for its simplicity and scalability. The platform enabled the use of JavaScript for server-side programming, bridging the gap between frontend and backend development. Companies like Netflix, PayPal, and LinkedIn adopted Node.js for its ability to streamline development and improve performance in high-traffic applications.
In 2012, Ryan Dahl stepped away from maintaining Node.js, passing the project to the Node.js Foundation. He later reflected on design decisions he wished he had implemented differently, including improved module management. These insights influenced his subsequent work on Deno, a secure runtime for JavaScript and TypeScript, introduced in 2020.
Deno, developed by Ryan Dahl and his team, addressed many of the limitations he identified in Node.js. Built with security and modern standards in mind, Deno includes features like native TypeScript support and secure-by-default runtime permissions. The project underscores Ryan Dahl's continued impact on the development ecosystem.
Through his contributions to JavaScript runtimes and open-source communities, Ryan Dahl has shaped modern web development. His innovations continue to influence software development practices, ensuring his legacy as a pioneer in backend technology.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryan_Dahl
- Snippet from Wikipedia: Ryan Dahl
Ryan Dahl (born 1981) is an American software engineer who is best known for creating the Node.js JavaScript runtime as well as the Deno JavaScript/TypeScript runtime.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFCn4ce5dVc
Ryan Dahl introduces JSR at DevWorld
https://tinyclouds.org/javascript_containers
I hate almost all software
Ryan Dahl
2011-09-29
It's unnecessary and complicated at almost every layer. At best I can congratulate someone for quickly and simply solving a problem on top of the shit that they are given. The only software that I like is one that I can easily understand and solves my problems. The amount of complexity I'm willing to tolerate is proportional to the size of the problem being solved.
In the past year I think I have finally come to understand the ideals of Unix: file descriptors and processes orchestrated with C. It's a beautiful idea. This is not however what we interact with. The complexity was not contained. Instead I deal with DBus and /usr/lib and Boost and ioctls and SMF and signals and volatile variables and prototypal inheritance and _C99_FEATURES_ and dpkg and autoconf.
Those of us who build on top of these systems are adding to the complexity. Not only do you have to understand $LD_LIBRARY_PATH to make your system work but now you have to understand $NODE_PATH too - there's my little addition to the complexity you must now know! The users - the one who just want to see a webpage - don't care. They don't care how we organize /usr, they don't care about zombie processes, they don't care about bash tab completion, they don't care if zlib is dynamically linked or statically linked to Node. There will come a point where the accumulated complexity of our existing systems is greater than the complexity of creating a new one. When that happens all of this shit will be trashed. We can flush boost and glib and autoconf down the toilet and never think of them again.
Those of you who still find it enjoyable to learn the details of, say, a programming language - being able to happily recite off if NaN equals or does not equal null - you just don't yet understand how utterly fucked the whole thing is. If you think it would be cute to align all of the equals signs in your code, if you spend time configuring your window manager or editor, if put unicode check marks in your test runner, if you add unnecessary hierarchies in your code directories, if you are doing anything beyond just solving the problem - you don't understand how fucked the whole thing is. No one gives a fuck about the glib object model.
The only thing that matters in software is the experience of the user.
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