←back to thread

The tragedy of running an old Node project

(abdisalan.com)
272 points abdisalan | 2 comments | 18 Nov 24 18:24 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
Show context
mvkel ◴[18 Nov 24 19:03 UTC] No.42175730[source]▶
> time to run it after not touching it for 4 years

> Two hours of my life gone...

Two hours of work after 4 years sounds ... perfectly acceptable?

And it would have run perfectly right away if the node version was specified, so a good learning, too

This feels like making a mountain out of a mole hill

replies(21): >>42175799 #>>42175818 #>>42175826 #>>42175846 #>>42176217 #>>42176305 #>>42176788 #>>42176958 #>>42181497 #>>42182299 #>>42182564 #>>42182778 #>>42183020 #>>42183093 #>>42183501 #>>42183725 #>>42184814 #>>42192770 #>>42193606 #>>42194518 #>>42211558 #
ivan_gammel ◴[19 Nov 24 13:19 UTC] No.42183093[source]▶
I still can open my decade-old Java projects, run build with modern Maven/JDK and get working code - in a few minutes. Two hours of dancing with a drum doesn’t feel acceptable to me.
replies(5): >>42183272 #>>42183987 #>>42184062 #>>42184422 #>>42187870 #
KronisLV ◴[19 Nov 24 14:47 UTC] No.42183987[source]▶
> I still can open my decade-old Java projects, run build with modern Maven/JDK and get working code - in a few minutes.

Try any old Spring project, where anything newer than JDK 8 will be incompatible. The only saving grace is that JDK 8 is still available, but even it will eventually reach EOL. And then you look at JDK 11 projects and realize that they won't run on anything newer due to Lombok issues, so that's another thing to update and fix.

I think the experience of code rot is universal and increases with the amount of dependencies you have.

replies(3): >>42184173 #>>42187355 #>>42211544 #
1. nitwit005 ◴[19 Nov 24 19:47 UTC] No.42187355[source]▶
Spring generates bytecode, and Lombok is a language extension. You're effectively writing code in another language that's very similar to Java.

The company I work at has a ton of projects stuck on ancient spring versions and Java 8 (or Java 6 in one instance). They still insist on Spring despite being essentially unable to upgrade to a version newer than a decade old.

replies(1): >>42191475 #
2. KronisLV ◴[20 Nov 24 07:16 UTC] No.42191475[source]▶
> Spring generates bytecode, and Lombok is a language extension. You're effectively writing code in another language that's very similar to Java.

That's the reality of using the language in production projects.

Same as how you're likely to see more than just Python or Node being used in projects that list them in the tech stack, because there's native dependencies and tooling used.