[pointyhat]

But 99.9% of these innovations don't help the world. They help a small subset of a small subset of a small subset of problems from a small subset of a small subset of a small subset of society.

Compare to if someone worked out how to stop Neurofibromatosis dead in its tracks for example (a condition my youngest daughter has), they'd give 1 in 3000 people a better chance.

People get a Jesus complex because they build a tool that a vocal minority uses.

[saturn]

Even if we accept your claim that only 1 in 1000 inventions help the world, which I think is pessimistic, that's still progress. What would you rather people do? Not invent?

A programmer writing a new framework might not directly help cure Neurofibromatosis but they might make it slightly easier for another programmer, which is then inspired to work on his program, which saves a medical researcher a few minutes and gives him the time he needs to have his breakthrough. Or maybe a better search result gave him what he needs. Technology is cumulative. Criticising people because they're not working on your favoured project is pretty lame.

[pointyhat]

I agree with your sentiment but I see the other side of it. Technology is cumulative but noise slows down decision making and fragments knowledge.

The world does not need 200 programming languages, 1000 javascript frameworks, 500 different web servers and 20-odd social platforms which exist only to boost the ego of the originator who can market their idea better than othersr. It needs some concise, un-fancy-looking tools that are fit for purpose and can be used as a common ground for communicating ideas. There is so much fragmentation it's unbelievable.

Everyone thinks they can do better, yet no-one delivers any real efficiency improvement.

TBH going back in time, I can still deliver the same output as node.js with classic ASP/Jscript from 1998 arguably with less code and time spent.

Back on the subject of med research; they tend to still use Perl, bits of sticky tape and TI89/92 calculators a lot apparently (word of mouth from a friend who works in tissue sample analysis).

[saturn]

> The world does not need 200 programming languages, 1000 javascript frameworks, 500 different web servers and 20-odd social platforms

But .. that is the way we find the way forward. It's like evolution. We may not need 500 different web servers but .. that's a lot of different ideas, a lot of variation, and in the long run, a lot of innovation. Eventually the "best" way is chosen and we go to the next generation.

I actually think the proliferation of programming languages and frameworks, especially open source, is one of the purest meritocracies you can find. They live or die by their quality, innovation, new features. And the whole community is dragged forward. What you are advocating is basically central planning. Did you realise that?

> I can still deliver the same output as node.js with classic ASP/Jscript from 1998 arguably with less code and time spent.

LOL. Dude. No way.

Something you said earlier was instructive as to the mistake you are making with this line of thought. You said that "programmers can't do anything more today than they could in 2001" - or something similar. Or that other guy said it and you agreed, whatever.

Look, that's literally true. In fact it's literally true to say that any programmer can do anything as long as they use a turing complete language. This has been true since the days of ENIAC.

What has advanced, massively, is the knowledge of the best ways of doing things. Design. Efficiency. Elegance, maintainability, scalability. That is what has mainly improved. Knowledge. The laws of the universe have not changed, everyone agrees with that, but we have worked out, a little more, what works and what doesn't.

And I'm afraid your ASP/Jscript falls into the latter category. I'm sure you could mimic some tiny subset of node.js using that toolset. But it would be a hideous mess of spaghetti code. Unless, of course, you used the knowledge you gained over the last 10 years to basically reimplement node.js in ASP, presumably gaining express pre-approved VIP entry to Hell in the process. So things have advanced, haven't they?

[pointyhat]

Tell me two characteristics or features of node.js that cannot be built (in an old-fashioned circa 2001 way) with either ASP/JScript, Perl/mod_perl or PHP 4?

I'm not interested in "scalability" as that's moot - hardware is cheap.