[amelius]

For streaming, I can see that this can work.

But basically, what I wanted to do, is implement a module that works as an index between threads (e.g., a search-tree for fast lookup). However, since in Node.js all threads are in a separate process, it is (afaict) impossible to make this efficient, as processes do not share data.

[NathanKP]

So in Node.js this would be accomplished by using a shared data store like Redis. For example I run eight processes per c3.xlarge instance, and the instances share a Redis which contains data like that. Particularly indexes could be stored in the Redis hash structure.

Basically Node.js is designed around the concept of microservices and separation of concerns. Rather than doing everything in one giant, multithreaded monolithic process you break your service up into loosely coupled components that talk to each other via messaging and share common datastores. Some people really like this pattern (I'm a strong advocate of it myself) because it scales really, really well.

[amelius]

Well, the "index" was merely an example. Actually, what I want to do is implement persistent data structures (a.k.a. functional or immutable data structures) in a combination of javascript and C++. See [1]

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persistent_data_structure

[warfangle]

The `servicebus` module is a really cool way to coordinate events between microservices, especially if they don't necessarily "know" about each other.