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by Chyzwar 2183 days ago
I know quite a few banks that heavily invest in node.js. Velocity of full-stack JavaScript team is something that is hard to replicate. With node.js and Typescript you can get reasonable performance and decent safety/maintenance.

JavaScript's community is just bigger, there are people with different level of skill but as a whole it is more welcoming and progressive.

2 comments

Yeah but what are the banks doing with Node JS? Also, is the single language that beneficial? There are all sorts of differences between typescript and node no?
Building services for user facing applications. Banks have multi tiered architecture. They have back-end services (transactions, batch jobs, risk, calculations, analytics etc) these would be written in mostly in Java/Python/Scala/C#/C++. You might have situation where there is multiple systems processing same transactions overnight. Banks also have quite a lot of user facing applications, most of these now use React/Angular but data fed to it will not be coming from same services that process transactions(security and ease of maintenance). You will but another service just for frontend application that access back-end services via limited API or event queue.

Keep in mind that there is also plenty of systems that are older than me and have massive teams. Banks are mixed bag. You can work in amazing cutting edge project or maintain project in dead language.

Chyzwar sounds very familiar to me. It's one of the characters in a famous Dan Simmons' series Hyperion. Are you Polish by any chance?

If that's the case, would you be willing to drop an example of a banking company there that's doing node.js (that would be the first time for me hearing anything about a large scale deployments of that tech in banking)?

yes, I am Polish.

Lloyds Banking Group is organizing JavaScript meetups[1] in Edinburgh. They even invite node.js core contributors on some talks. They're investing into full-stack JavaScript teams for the user facing applications.

JP Morgan and Chase. Even from the time I worked there was quite a lot of new projects created in node.js. Node.js became approved tech within company. Java is still most popular but teams have quite a bit of autonomy in choosing technology.

I also had RBS and Tesco Bank requiters contacting me for JS Full-stack jobs.

[1] https://www.meetup.com/react-edinburgh/