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Discussion on: Reflecting on a year with Node.js and why I should have stuck with Laravel

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Tyler Smith

Hey Nicolas, thanks for checking out the post. I use Express because it's the most widely adopted Node Framework and it's a project of the Open JS foundation. If I build anything important using Express, I have confidence it'll still be around in five years.

I'm generally a little hesitant to use NestJS, Adonis, Sails, Loopback or other batteries-included Node frameworks for the same set of reasons:

  1. Lack of adoption. Every major Node.js tool has a story for integrating with Express. None of the batteries-included Node.js frameworks have major adoption, so I have to figure out how to integrate other tools myself. It also means if I run into a problem, there are far fewer resources available than Laravel.
  2. Uncertain future. I'm not sure what the projects future looks like. Adonis is mostly carried by one person. Sails is maintained by a company out of Texas. For long term projects, using Adonis feels like a risk.
  3. Lack of first-party integrations. Laravel kills it with the amount of first party integrations they have. It's a compelling reason to choose Laravel over Node frameworks, and even popular frameworks in other languages like Django or Rails.

I'm also just faster getting up-and-running with Laravel. It has things like password resets built into the framework's first-party packages, which is a feature I don't want to have to implement myself.

All of that said, if the Node community converges on NestJS as its go-to framework the way that the Ruby community has converged on Rails, I can see myself going all-in on NestJS and full-stack JS.