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Ask HN: Is Meteor.js mature to enough to use it for building big applications?

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Re: Ask HN: Is Meteor.js mature to enough to use it for building big applications?

#41

Post by dandv »

jonlachlan wrote: post #39

Been using Meteor for 4 months, and I'm an junior ops guy turned developer. So if I say something that sounds like I don't know what I'm talking about, it's probably because I don't, so take it easy. Having said that, here's my two cents: First and foremost, Meteor is a complete platform for building modern web applications. You get so much out-of-the box functionality that you'll be productive in no time. Also, you…

Ha. Your writeup basically summarizes my extensive "Why Meteor" article. Curious if you've read it before, or if Meteor just makes developers become great minds ;)

http://wiki.dandascalescu.com/essays/Why_Meteor

Re: Ask HN: Is Meteor.js mature to enough to use it for building big applications?

#42

Post by collyw »

shubhamjain wrote: post #35
collyw wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that depends on exactly what you are doing. If your application doesn't diverge much from a "standard application" in your framework, then you are probably better off using one. If its going to need a lot of customization then probably libraries are a better way to go.

Except that you underestimate the effort in incorporating the "framework" in your new project. Sure it isn't hard per se, but the steps involved in learning every bit of a process that surrounds the framework kills the excitement at some point or other. Like in rails, learning all the routing, code generators, forms, asset pipelines just makes you quit at some point. I think things would be much easier if I had "grow…

Maybe you know one already.

I think it goes both ways. Makes some things a lot easier and others a lot harder. Django's admin for example, can often give you 90% of what you are looking for with very little effort. It doesn't take a lot of effort to learn it. The again, if your application falls outside that model, no point in trying to shoehorn it in.

I would also say that frameworks keep things consistent(I know Django well, so based on that). I recently added Django-rest-framework to my application. It took very little to learn that as they have tried to keep the coding style the same as the class based views. Using them is almost the same, so after the initial half day or so in the docs, everything just clicked into place.

Re: Ask HN: Is Meteor.js mature to enough to use it for building big applications?

#43

Post by jonlachlan »

chucksmart wrote: post #29
roarkjs wrote: post #26

ITT: People complaining that a technology isn't mature because some features rely on 3rd party plugins. Please -- name one technology that doesn't.

Meteor is like Unix; some people want Windows!

I don't understand this comparison. Meteor makes things simpler and removes a lot of low-level complexity. It makes software development simpler. By "some people want Windows", it sounds like you're suggesting that there's a better platform/framework for web development that's "plug-and-play" ready -- so easy that a non-developer could use it. I actually think that Meteor is the closest thing to this, and is the very best starting point for new developers. To this thread's question, it's also great for large applications. But at the end of the day, it's still web development -- you need to learn JavaScript, Mongo, html, CSS.

Re: Ask HN: Is Meteor.js mature to enough to use it for building big applications?

#44

Post by jonlachlan »

tomelders wrote: post #11

I don't know about meteor in particular - but my advice would be to eschew frameworks in favour of libraries, I'm not the first person to suggest this and it's worth using some google-fu to read the differing opinions. Essentially, Common JS + NPM lets people/teams create their own "frameworks" with very little effort whilst also freeing them from the bulk and cruft of a framework that has a limited future; if it has…

You can weigh the trade-off between needing to configure your environment with what Meteor gives you. I would say Meteor has a value proposition that's definitely worth looking at. The list of things it helps you with is more than most other frameworks, and at the same time it's modular so you can swap in components that are better for your use-case. You also have the benefit of still being in the JavaScript/NPM ecosystem, which is easy to take advantage of.

Re: Ask HN: Is Meteor.js mature to enough to use it for building big applications?

#45

Post by josephschmoe »

The answer to this question will always be "Not until X is available" where X is something needed by the company of the person answering your question.

By the time everyone agrees, it'll be 10 years down the road and we'll have a new framework.

Re: Ask HN: Is Meteor.js mature to enough to use it for building big applications?

#46

Post by jonlachlan »

dandv wrote: post #41
jonlachlan wrote: post #39

Been using Meteor for 4 months, and I'm an junior ops guy turned developer. So if I say something that sounds like I don't know what I'm talking about, it's probably because I don't, so take it easy. Having said that, here's my two cents: First and foremost, Meteor is a complete platform for building modern web applications. You get so much out-of-the box functionality that you'll be productive in no time. Also, you…

Ha. Your writeup basically summarizes my extensive "Why Meteor" article. Curious if you've read it before, or if Meteor just makes developers become great minds ;) http://wiki.dandascalescu.com/essays/Why_Meteor

I read it about a month ago, but these are thoughts that have been ruminating in my head for the past few weeks. I have struggled to explain the benefits of Meteor to others, they always try to compare it to React, Angular, Knockout, Node, Express. It's hard to get people to understand that it's a full-stack platform whose purpose is to make programming easier and faster. http://meteor.com/about

Re: Ask HN: Is Meteor.js mature to enough to use it for building big applications?

#47

Post by softwarerero »

roarkjs wrote: post #23
alexandernst wrote: post #7

No, meteor is still missing quite some, basic I'd say, things. Have a look at https://trello.com/b/hjBDflxp/meteor-roadmap , but I can make a quick resume for you: * There is no easy/official way for doing joins in subscriptions (you can't join "Posts" and "Comments" in a typical blog example). I'm aware of several plugins that try to implement that, but they all lack official support and quite of them just fail at d…

No i18n? https://github.com/TAPevents/tap-i18n

A little older but not dated is https://github.com/softwarerero/meteor-accounts-t9n that started as a translation of the meteor basic packages and it is easy to add translations for an application. Currently it comes with 24 translations of standard meteor packages. We have not implemente international date and calendar support so it is not a real i18n solution, just translation. But it works in many production projects, which answers the original question indirectly.

Re: Ask HN: Is Meteor.js mature to enough to use it for building big applications?

#48

Post by dandv »

jonlachlan wrote: post #46
dandv wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ha. Your writeup basically summarizes my extensive "Why Meteor" article. Curious if you've read it before, or if Meteor just makes developers become great minds ;) http://wiki.dandascalescu.com/essays/Why_Meteor

I read it about a month ago, but these are thoughts that have been ruminating in my head for the past few weeks. I have struggled to explain the benefits of Meteor to others, they always try to compare it to React, Angular, Knockout, Node, Express. It's hard to get people to understand that it's a full-stack platform whose purpose is to make programming easier and faster. http://meteor.com/about

Maybe this will help - I just wrote a "Meteor vs. the MEAN stack" article: http://wiki.dandascalescu.com/essays/meteor_js_vs_the_mean_s...

Re: Ask HN: Is Meteor.js mature to enough to use it for building big applications?

#49

Post by dandv »

alexandernst wrote: post #21
kowdermeister wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know these project managers. They ask for a 15 line JS helper "library" enterprise level support and they start to scratch their head "what if the developer abandons it".

Only that we're not talking about a 15 lines JS helpers, but about quite big parts that should be in the core and instead they are some 3rd party plugins.

If you're looking for a monolithic solution, Meteor may not be for you. Check out Wakanda and Servoy.

Delegating quasi-core parts of the platform to 3rd party libraries is quite common. For example, the preferred routing package for Angular, ui-router (https://github.com/angular-ui/ui-router) was born four years after the release of Angular, and for DOM state preservation, the ui-router-extras (https://github.com/christopherthielen/ui-router-extras) addon is required.

Re: Ask HN: Is Meteor.js mature to enough to use it for building big applications?

#50

Post by dandv »

jonlachlan wrote: post #43
chucksmart wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meteor is like Unix; some people want Windows!

I don't understand this comparison. Meteor makes things simpler and removes a lot of low-level complexity. It makes software development simpler. By "some people want Windows", it sounds like you're suggesting that there's a better platform/framework for web development that's "plug-and-play" ready -- so easy that a non-developer could use it. I actually think that Meteor is the closest thing to this, and is the very…

There are such monolithic plug&play frameworks, targeted at line-of-business apps: Wakanda and Servoy.
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