libuv VS stale

I wound up on a different team with pre-existing Python code so temporarily shelved my use of Go for a bit, and we used Sanic (an async Python framework built on top of the excellent uvloop & libuv that also powers Node.js) to build some APIs for live channel management & operations. We hand-wrote our OpenAPI and used it to generate documentation and a CLI, which was an improvement over what was there (or not) before. Other teams used the OpenAPI document to generate SDKs to interact with our service.

In the source code of the Node.js opensource project, lib folder contains JavaScript code, mostly wrappers over C++ and function definitions. On the contrary, src folder contains C++ implementations of the functions, which pulls dependencies from the V8 project, the libuv project, the zlib project, the llhttp project, and many more - which are all placed at the deps folder.

Libuv, the C library that gives Node.js its asynchronous, non-blocking I/O capability is responsible for managing the thread pool. Node.js gives you the capability of using additional threads for computationally expensive and long-lasting operations to avoid blocking the event loop.

Node.js is written in C, C++, and JavaScript. The core components of Node.js - the V8 engine and the libuv library - are written in C++ and C, respectively, since these languages provide low-level access to system resources, making them well-suited for building high-performance and efficient applications. JavaScript is mainly used to write the application logic.

x8 apparently https://github.com/libuv/libuv/pull/3952

Notably upgrades to libuv 1.45 which has io_uring support. Faster file system access! Awhh yeah, it's on.

Remarkable what a mild & unintrusive PR adding io_uring was. https://github.com/libuv/libuv/pull/3952

Well, the single-threaded nature ultimately leads to its biggest downfall. Node.js utilizes a synchronous event loop engineered using Libuv that takes in code from the call stack and executes it.

Today while I was looking at a list of open pull requests I still had open on Github, I was surprised to see a pull request that had been opened 2 years ago that I did not recall authoring, so I clicked on the PR. Turns out, I did in fact write the pull request, and it went 2 years without so much as a comment, let alone a review from the project maintainers.

Stale Bot helps in closing down stale issues and pull requests that have been open for a long time and have seen no particular action, hence, cutting down on the accumulation of issues and pull requests on the project.

> Thesis: Stalebot -- in dutiful service of current human resource constraints -- feels like it unthinkingly prioritizes discard of past contributors' time resources, over the mobilization of new human resources.

https://github.com/probot/stale/pull/107#issuecomment-379021...

I've had a beef with Stale since early on. It's a very old-world view of solving the problem of open source capacity. A better tool would instead try to find and encourage new resources (new contributors), whereas stalebot drives them away, and so kinda cuts the project off at the knees

It save cognitive and emotional resources of current contributors (in the short-term view), but driving future contributors away (in the long-term).