Comment by Denny Trebbin on "Are the benefits of learning C++ for node extensions worth it for JS coders?"

Yes, it is. But not in all situations.

Typical use cases for native extensions are WebSockets, WebRTC, Encryptions, Image Processing, Video encodings, native notifications and systray integrations, etc. Or basically, everything which is available only via FFI.

I saw a native extension which calculates the size of a given file by bypassing Node.js super fast file access and using an own implementation. Maybe they did this, or it is necessary for some projects running on a particular OS and or individual file system. Maybe it needs to lock the file exclusively while counting its size. Nevermind, everything is possible, but not everything is necessary.

The pros are integration and sometimes performance.
The cons are restricting usage.
- A native extension written for Ubuntu may not perform well when compiled and execute on CentOS. A native extension for Linux may never compile on Windows.

It can be good to learn some C/C++ and write some native extensions. It also enables you to contribute to Node.js core :-)

Yes, being able to author extensions usually helps with heavy computation or when speed really is a factor but would being able to read and understand node's core source (as well as V8!) help me write better JS particularly run on node?

I don't think so except you have a crazy wired brain (hope that's not offensive, if so, I am truly sorry about that).

The mental model for both languages is very much different. In your C/C++ code, you must care for every tiny bit, such as memory management, sometimes even CPU cycle management (to optimize loops, etc.), the source organization is very different, and deferring CPU load is very different (I'm talking about concurrency or multi-threading if you will).

Long story short, I can't imagine how C/C++ knowledge can lead to better JS code. But I'm here to learn :-D Proof me wrong!

@fibric Crazy? Because of my run-on sentence?

I take an example from Petka Antonov (author of Bluebird) who has extensive knowledge of V8 source. This was the reason for Bluebird being as fast as it is.

I didn't mean it the negative way. And yes it can help, but it's not necessary to know C/C++ that much to learn and understand about the internals of Node.js. I learn much more from studying the discussions around each PR on Github :-)

@fibric Holy cow, I don't know how you have the time. I tried watching the nodejs repo not long ago and my inbox filled up every day.

But the commit guide for Node.js core is clean. GitHub and GitKraken showing perfectly what changed. I get a good impression of what's going on even without knowing much C/C++. But I'm not following every aspect or domain. I disable notifications for many PR discussions to keep my inbox clean ;-)

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