If you want to build a real-time collaboration app today, what you would you use instead?
Node.js. Meteor was dead on arrival to be honest.
Ask HN: Is Meteor.js dead?
21–30 of 93 posts
Re: Ask HN: Is Meteor.js dead?
#22My company https://cleverbeagle.com is based on Meteor.js and we have an active customer base. I also run themeteorchef.com (tutorials on Meteor) and while we've definitely seen the hype die down, we still get organic traffic upwards of 25k uniques a month. Dead? No. We see a lot of new interest from overseas (Africa/Middle East/Asia). Technically speaking, Meteor's in the best state it's ever been: latest Node versi…
I’m using it for a side project which has been running for over a year. It’s not something to which I can devote much time and Meteor is easy to set up for what I need.
I suppose that if it dies I can re-write the application using some other framework (I’ve done Android/Java and iOS/RubyMotion versions), though it would be a bit of a pain. For now, with no new features planned, I can keep it running as long as the Meteor bug and security fixes keep coming.
Re: Ask HN: Is Meteor.js dead?
#23My company https://cleverbeagle.com is based on Meteor.js and we have an active customer base. I also run themeteorchef.com (tutorials on Meteor) and while we've definitely seen the hype die down, we still get organic traffic upwards of 25k uniques a month. Dead? No. We see a lot of new interest from overseas (Africa/Middle East/Asia). Technically speaking, Meteor's in the best state it's ever been: latest Node versi…
> It's not the only option but it's a damn good one.
I've been using Parse, is another good option in your opinion? I quite like it, especially as everything is available via REST so it is easy to use it with Elm
Re: Ask HN: Is Meteor.js dead?
#24I never used meteor, but from what I understand it's functionality was, I currently use FeathersJS + SocketIO + VueJS (and nuxtJS for serverside rendering).
Re: Ask HN: Is Meteor.js dead?
#25We still use it, though we are phasing it out.
In general, its solid for its use cases, but you need to understand what its good at. Its pretty great for small apps, prototyping, hobby projects, etc.
There are a few things we learned that I'd share:
Use React. Should be obvious. Meteor's react support is pretty great.
Stay away from Meteor packages as much as possible. Its better to look for a similar NPM package and do the integration work yourself then to rely on the "magic sauce" that many Meteor packages use. The only ones I can really suggest using are the official MDG ones.
You don't have to use pub/sub to fetch data. You can absolutely fetch data through Meteor Methods in situations where real-time isn't important. Meteor methods are just simple request/response RPC. Pub/sub can become stupidly hard to reason about, though in simple applications can make your app seem really fast and responsive.
That being said, its got great integration with Apollo. If you start with Meteor, ignore all of the DDP stuff (pub/sub, methods, etc) and just build the API with Apollo, you wont regret it.
If you think you'll want to deploy a mobile app, maybe don't do Meteor. You still definitely can, but Meteor's semantics around the always-on websocket connection tend to severely hurt a mobile-first experience.
Today, I'm not sure I can recommend new projects go with it. That being said, I also feel like a normal GraphQL server on Node isn't "far enough" down the path that Meteor set. The JS backend world is still really far away from an AIO framework like Rails/Phoenix; Meteor is the closest we got, but its not the answer.
Re: Ask HN: Is Meteor.js dead?
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure, it's being actively developed, but I haven't really heard of it being used in big production systems, which could indicate the community's interest has moved on.
Why do you have that feeling? https://www.meteor.com/ or https://www.meteor.com/showcase By the way: https://www.reddit.com/r/javascript/comments/672nrk/is_meteo... the second comment ;)
Not that this is the definitive answer by any means, but simple measures like SO trends suggest that the community has moved on a bit[0].
Obviously I don't think that's definitive proof of Meteor being dead, but usually it seems like that's an indicator of declining new interest (which leads to extinction over time).
For another example, while I wouldn't say Backbone.js is completely dead[1], it's hard to pretend that it hasn't been largely supplanted by React and ES6, and Backbone probably doesn't have a bright future. There's undoubtedly a community around it still, but I would be shocked if that community doesn't get smaller each year.
I don't doubt that Meteor will continue to live for quite some time, but I think there's valid reasons to suggest the community will continue to shrink.
0: https://insights.stackoverflow.com/trends?tags=meteor
1: https://insights.stackoverflow.com/trends?tags=backbone.js
Re: Ask HN: Is Meteor.js dead?
#27I hope so
Re: Ask HN: Is Meteor.js dead?
#28I started using Meteor in 2014. I was active for two years, posting frequently on their forums, writing packages, building MVPs, etc. As I started building more things with Meteor, I realized that it doesn't scale well. It's great for proof-of-concept work. Frameworks can be incredibly productive for low-scale work, but they are painful to scale. No framework that can be simultaneously optimized for every use-case. N…
What do you mean by it does not scale well? number of users using it or size of the project?
Re: Ask HN: Is Meteor.js dead?
#29I never used meteor, but from what I understand it's functionality was, I currently use FeathersJS + SocketIO + VueJS (and nuxtJS for serverside rendering).
I built an app that was 90% CRUD a year ago and I choose Loopback, but FeathersJS was on my radar. Loopback did the trick, but I just hated defining models in JSON instead of JavaScript objects. Good to hear FeathersJS on HN. I’ll check out the project again.
Re: Ask HN: Is Meteor.js dead?
#30My company https://cleverbeagle.com is based on Meteor.js and we have an active customer base. I also run themeteorchef.com (tutorials on Meteor) and while we've definitely seen the hype die down, we still get organic traffic upwards of 25k uniques a month. Dead? No. We see a lot of new interest from overseas (Africa/Middle East/Asia). Technically speaking, Meteor's in the best state it's ever been: latest Node versi…
I’m using it for a side project which has been running for over a year. It’s not something to which I can devote much time and Meteor is easy to set up for what I need. I suppose that if it dies I can re-write the application using some other framework (I’ve done Android/Java and iOS/RubyMotion versions), though it would be a bit of a pain. For now, with no new features planned, I can keep it running as long as the M…
Technically you can run it indefinitely. Meteor is open source and the Meteor team has been actively working with community members to do PRs and what not. There are enough people on it that the ball (to some extent) would be picked up by community folks. Perhaps not a bad thing, either, as it could breathe some new life into it.