Is it? It performs slower than e.g. Fastify. Don't see how that's doing well.
> Who cares how old something is, if it works well, why not use it?
It doesn't. That's the whole point. Software is always evolving and I doubt it's even close to complete. There hasn't been meaningful updates to Express in a long time. Why do people use it and/or promote it as a standard?
It's such a marginal difference when you consider real-life applications built with either express or Fastify though. Seldom is the actual bottleneck which HTTP library you use (unless you're at a really, really, really big scale), and more about how you structure your code, database and general architecture. I can count on one hand the number of times I've had to care deeply about the HTTP stack in order to optimize something, while I've probably had to optimize 100s of web products over the years, all done without touching the HTTP parts at all.
> It doesn't. That's the whole point. Software is always evolving and I doubt it's even close to complete. There hasn't been meaningful updates to Express in a long time. Why do people use it and/or promote it as a standard?
How to handle HTTP requests kind of doesn't. HTTP 1.1 continues to work, and will continue to be sufficient for at least 90% of all the use cases on the web for a long time.
I know that the JS community generally suffers from "If it hasn't been updated in the last year, it's probably broken and not modern enough" syndrome, but some software actually end up being "finished" and good enough for the task at hand. What improvements could you actually add to express without breaking the API interface that millions of applications depend on? Sometimes stability is wanted and needed, and that's how you get mature software. Who wants to rewrite their application and architecture every time some library you happen to use decides to "improve" it?
If you take out your 386 and boot up Dos 3.1 it'll; continue to work too. Let's just not improve, right?
> but some software actually end up being "finished" and good enough for the task at hand
Like dead? Do you ever stop learning and growing? Are you "finished" too? There are new vulnerabilities, new compatibilities, existing bugs, different use cases, etc - you think it's finished = turning a blind eye.
> It's such a marginal difference when you consider real-life applications built with either express or Fastify though.
That's how we get Electron and everything become a resource hog. Oh it doesn't matter. Oh marginal difference. No don't recycle, don't do good for the environment and anything in life because it's all marginal. Why even reply? It's a marginal difference.
No, we can do better and will.
Because for the most part - it doesn't need them.
Can you build a better express? Maybe. Lots of folks are trying that still, and you're welcome to use the tooling they put out.
Is express dead? Hell no.
Express is well documented, well supported, getting security patches, and comes up entirely clean for a new install (including most of the optional packages you might add).
Express has some sharp edges (it's been mentioned plenty above, but mainly because the framework predates the wide adoption of native promises in the JS space), but again, they're well known and relatively straight forward to work around.
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Long story short, this:
> It doesn't. That's the whole point. Software is always evolving and I doubt it's even close to complete. There hasn't been meaningful updates to Express in a long time. Why do people use it and/or promote it as a standard?
Is an ignorant take. People promote it because it's a good tool.
Next you'll be telling me that I shouldn't use Bash because Bash 5.0 came out in 2018 and only got two minor point releases over the next 5 years. But that sounds dumb, huh?
What's dumb is not being able to tell the difference. It's not about the numbers.
https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/bash.git/ shows there are constant updates. Things are being worked on. Your example proves my whole point. There are updates every year for many years.
Express? Not so. There are many gaps in its history. And for a tool like Express that has way more surface area it is in need of a lot more testing and updating e.g. if NodeJs changes something it breaks.
Does Bash need to make sure it works with HTTP3, Brotli or many other things that came out? No.
> Because for the most part - it doesn't need them.
Right, let's go back to the Stone Age. You don't need clothes either - just a leaf. You're just so dismissive on innovation then why bother? You don't even need NodeJs. Back to assembly and punch cards...
> Is an ignorant take.
Yes, yours. As shown above by your example.
> People promote it because it's a good tool.
And how do you know that? Where are the stats? Or people just google for NodeJs server, see the top response being Express and just do that. The cycle then repeats. Have people promoting it actually benchmarked, compared and investigated all the tools before making this informed decision? I'm sure you've heard from each and everyone 1 of them to know the answer eh.
