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This question was asked at work yesterday, and a couple of our developers are firmly in the camp that if we were to rewrite the back-end (currently C# with WCF [gross] to handle the endpoint calls and with SQL Server, no ORM, just using Dapper) they would write it in Node with TypeScript.
Conversely, I'm in the camp that if I'm writing anything on the back-end, it's going to be C# / .NET, whether it's a DLL or ASP.NET Core or a simple console app.
So what's you're take? Why would you use one vs. the other for back-end development?
Assuming your 7 year old back-end is written in .NET, if you had to rewrite it, would you switch from .NET to Node?
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I love TypeScript. As a language, it has so much going for it but, and this is a massive but, if I were rewriting a .NET app now, I would go with .NET Core all the way. The new hosting model is faster than Node's; it runs on just about every platform you could possibly want and the new features such as Span<t> means that it can work with much lower code overhead.
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TypeScript isn't a language as much as it is a wrapper around javascript. It's still javascript.
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
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You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
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When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013
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Wouldn't that be true of any language? Say, C or C++ being a wrapper around assembly language, C# and Java being a wrapper around their IL, which in turn is a wrapper around assembly?
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No, it's not the same at all. Typescript simply adds features to an existing language, and is not a language itself. Your other examples are languages unto themselves.
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
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You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
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When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013
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Can you debug typescript as typescript yet, or are you stuck trying to figure out how to map the fugly javascript that it was transpiled to back to your original code?
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, weighing all things in the balance of reason?
Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful?
--Zachris Topelius
Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies.
-- Sarah Hoyt
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You've been able to debug TypeScript as TypeScript for a long time now.
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cool, does it work in all browsers or need helper plugins?
Not being able to do so was the biggest downfall of the project using coffeescript I was on some years back; and when I asked about typescript a few times before I never got an answer.
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, weighing all things in the balance of reason?
Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful?
--Zachris Topelius
Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies.
-- Sarah Hoyt
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Dan Neely wrote: cool, does it work in all browsers or need helper plugins?
No plugins required. I'm able to debug TypeScript in VS without problems. VSC - now there I had problems with setting up breakpoints.
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You absolutely can.
Idaho Edokpayi
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Pete O'Hanlon wrote: and the new features such as Span<t> means that it can work with much lower code overhead.
Care to elaborate on that a bit? As in, I can understand memory overhead, so I'm curious how it can affect code overhead?
modified 6-Dec-19 13:50pm.
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I was loose with my terminology here. It should, of course, be memory overhead.
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"We're going to stop speaking English and start speaking French."
If there is a compelling reason to do something then do it. If you're doing something simply because you fancy a change or you think other people are doing it so there has to be a reason, then you shouldn't be in charge of making technical decisions.
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Hey, we finally agree on something. 
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Even with TypeScript, you're still dealing with the Highly Cursed Number type for arithmetic. There is neither checked arithmetic nor unchecked, only cursed, and it is up to you to force it to do the right thing.
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I'd stick with C# . And don't rewrite at all without good reason.
Sadly, where I am now, we're beginning to rewrite all the SSIS (ptui) we've been working on since 2011 in Ab Initio, for no good reason, except for maybe because it costs more and therefore must be better. 
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What's their reason for switching to Node?
Node is JavaScript, which is awful, and TypeScript just makes it look more like C# 
It kind of depends on your environment though.
Personally, I'm using Microsoft all the way down, so switching out anything would make it harder to integrate with everything else.
For example, if you're using Jenkins instead of Azure DevOps, C# integration is a lot harder to begin with and switching to JavaScript may make certain tasks easier.
One reason I'd use Node over .NET Core is to re-use code between a back-end and a front-end (website).
This is actually a scenario that came up recently for a web app we wanted to do with instant front-end calculations that we also had to do back-end for an initial generation for the data.
Node would probably also be a better fit if your data is unstructured (with a MongoDB database, for example).
Using Node could be a hiring decision if you can get plenty of JavaScript developers (because everyone knows JS), but no C# developers.
Other than that I have no reason to use Node instead of .NET Core, they're both multi-platform and lightning fast.
It even seems .NET Core is sometimes even faster than Node!
Node invites the horror that is npm with 10.000+ files in 40 MB for a single package into your back-end 
However, why not use microservices and use both where they best fit? 
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Our current ASP.Net WebForms code base requires asmx files so we can communicate with our DAL from javascript.
Our new MVC5 code base is all C#, and we're moving as far away from using javascript (in any of its evil forms) as we can. We also implemented a new DAL that is more generic than the existing one.
We're not using any ORM beyond the EF stuff that comes with your typical MVC project template. To be honest, we'd REALLY like to get rid of EF altogether, but we don't really have time to work on that aspect of the code.
It's hard to decide which I hate more - javascript, or EF.
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
-----
You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
-----
When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013
modified 7-Dec-19 6:03am.
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Our MVC5 talks to a webservice backend (also c# that runs a repo pattern with dapper as the persistence handler). It's lightning fast and pretty easy to implement.
Once you have a webservice/micro service layer, your frontends are really whatever makes your project easier for quicker ROI. I've never used node but I'm wondering why one would use a javascript library for server side implementation?
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From an architecture and design standpoint, I'd first look at the team and their core skills. The platform I chose would heavily depend on what my developers were used to coding, and could be productive in.
That's one of the primary considerations of any platform or stack, assuming they meet functional requirements.
So if it were me, again, I'd start there.
From there, most of the rest is dev fodder, that really people will tend to holy roll over.
What's important at the end of the day, is can it meet the requirements necessary to build your app?
And so if it were me, I'd go back to the design phase, mock up some overall system diagrams, and flow, maybe come up with a preliminary SBD, and then match it against the various offerings.
Whichever comes up strongest in helping the app fulfill it's behavioral requirements is what I'd go with, in the context of the given team's skillset
When I was growin' up, I was the smartest kid I knew. Maybe that was just because I didn't know that many kids. All I know is now I feel the opposite.
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I would do a lot more who/what/why discovery before choosing either - why are we rewriting, why do we need to do the whole thing, what skill sets do we have, what is our hosting story, what is the budget etc.
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Marc Clifton wrote: Assuming your 7 year old back-end is written in .NET, if you had to rewrite it, would you switch from .NET to Node?
I would oppose a rewrite even. You can replace parts of it, but you don't abandon the applications that make money.
Marc Clifton wrote: So what's you're take? Why would you use one vs. the other for back-end development?
If developing for a Rich UI, I will want to provide a Rich UI - not a simplistic website, but a UI that supports Windows color scheme's, resizing of panels, resizing of columns, and would always use the Common Controls (nearly unchanged still, since Win3).
Installed this "Slack" desktop application, and it is unintuitive and bloody ugly, does not support high-contrast color schemes, and is an insult to development in general.
Bastard Programmer from Hell 
If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
"If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.
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I would use F# 
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You should never switch tech because it's old, although we always like new and shiny things.
If it works you should maintain it (I have 16 year old code in production).
The reason to use (continue) .net :
- control over the environment (in house deployment)
- existing competence in the technology
- better IDE and dev tools
Reasons to switch to something else:
- not in house and in the cloud
- environment running costs at scale (generally .net more expensive)
Exception up = new Exception("Something is really wrong.");
throw up;
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