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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?

#51

Post by dandv »

joshowens wrote: post #18

Yes, I know of tons of applications that have a large code base and use Meteor. Go look at places like ClassCraft, WorkPop, MixMax, FantasyHub, etc. Plenty of teams are scaling both the code base and the app servers to handle thousands of concurrent connections. What is stopping you from trying Meteor, really? Your questions are more focused on the culture of building an app, not about the framework itself.

Very few know this, but probably the largest Meteor app in existence is Knotable, http://challengepost.com/software/knotable

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

#52

Post by dandv »

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…

That post was from 2010. I think you vastly underestimate the difficulty of building from scratch rich, modern single-page apps that satisfy today's users' needs. Have a look at "7 Principles of Rich Web Applications" [1] by the creator of Socket.io, and at my comparison between Meteor and the MEAN stack [2].

By the time you've built a reliable data synch transport that watches the server database and pushes changes to clients over intermittent connections, then pushes changes from client back to servers when they reconnect, all this with access control, a Meteor developer will have built 10 proof-of-concept apps, determined the product-market fit, and have a working web app for users to use.

[1]: http://rauchg.com/2014/7-principles-of-rich-web-applications...

[2]: 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?

#53

Post by dandv »

pc86 wrote: post #2

Do you ask because you are rewriting an existing large scale application (if so, why are you rewriting and why are you considering a different stack altogether?), or because you are starting a new application (there is a 95-99% chance it will never need to scale so the question is not terribly important unless it's between this and one similar technology for some reason)?

Exactly. And by the time you do need to scale, Meteor Development Group will have released Galaxy, the enterprise-grade Meteor hosting platform, which is their money maker.

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

#54

Post by dandv »

some_furry wrote: post #6

As long as you don't get trojan'd when you first install it, I don't see why not. http://curlpipesh.tumblr.com/post/107681088292/https-www-met...

Please stop spreading FUD and go read the source of https://install.meteor.com/

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

#55

Post by indymike »

Things have gotten a lot better over the past few months:

* Meteor has added quite a bit of functionality

* The cluster package has simplified scaling a lot

* Template level subscriptions are making it easier to build reusable reactive components

* The quality of third party packages is improving as more developers are contributing and reaching a level of proficiency

As far as "high performance", it's a node app... so you have all the plusses and minuses of node. I think Meteor is way ahead of the curve compared to other platforms (think Zope, Rails, Django, Drupal) for it's age.

I'm building several apps with it now including a WebGL CAD app and a mobile job search app. Performance is actually surprisingly good for the CAD app and the job search app runs as fast as the apis it sources data from will let it.

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

#56

Post by brown2rl »

alexandernst wrote: post #22
joshowens wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spoken like a true person who spent an hour investigating the platform and then moved on. All of the issues you've pointed out are solved using third-party packaging.

Please see the other replies I made. I'm aware of all those plugins, but I'm concerned about the official support they (don't) receive.

Not sure what you mean by "official"? As of 0.9.0, MDG hosts all the 3rd party packages on the "official" Meteor Package Server. (https://www.meteor.com/blog/2014/08/26/meteor-090-new-packag...)

I guess you want every package to start with "mrt:"?

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

#57

Post by some_furry »

dandv wrote: post #54
some_furry wrote: post #6

As long as you don't get trojan'd when you first install it, I don't see why not. http://curlpipesh.tumblr.com/post/107681088292/https-www-met...

Please stop spreading FUD and go read the source of https://install.meteor.com/

It's not FUD, but I don't want to expose myself to criminal liability by PoCing the issue (it would require hacking the server and trojaning the shell script).

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

#58

Post by nourharidy »

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…

About joins in subscriptions, other than the community package Publish Composite, there is an officially supported alternative yet very poorly documented or mentioned, using the Spacebars layer: It is the template helper argument feature, which is in my opinion must more reliable and developer friendly, you can read about it here: https://www.discovermeteor.com/blog/spacebars-secrets-explor...

A typical example would be to display a "post" with comments from two different collections:

Template: {{#each post}} {{title}} {{body}} {{#each comment _id}} {{username}} {{body}} {{/each}} {{/each}}

Helpers definition: Template.posts.helpers({ post:function(){ return Posts.find(); }, comment:function(post_id){ return Comments.find({post_id: post_id}); } })

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

#59

Post by metaculus »

What I like about Meteor is its community, which is very active and diverse. Most people who use Meteor tend to have a deep fondness and attachment to the framework as opposed to other Javascript frameworks in which IMO are used for the sake of their performant, simplicity, scalability, etc. all the functionalities.

One thing is for sure--Meteor makes Javascript less ugly by letting us write synchronous code. And the "place the code whereever you like" approach really simplifies the coding experience and make it very enjoyable.

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

#60

Post by brwn »

benstr wrote: post #25
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…

There are great packages available that handle these items for you. the Meteor Development Group is dedicated to maintaining the sub-projects that make up Meteor and equally dedicated to supporting community packages by not stepping on too many toes. Just take the the routing snap-fu with Angular as an example of how not to do things. Meteor is focused on making a framework with as little friction as possible with th…

I'm a .NET guy, and I love Meteor. There's no call for this kind of ragging because he expressed his opinion that he felt it wasn't yet ready for large applications.

He made valid points, you had a good rebuttal with respect to alternative methods while embracing the ecosystem. There was no need to take it to an unprofessional level.

In addition, his points are all valid - these things aren't baked-in, and once they are, he's sure the platform will get a large user base. Currently, you can make a large application securely with the commonly sought out factors of high availability, reliability, and scalability - but you have to work at it.

It's incredibly nice when a big company like Microsoft comes out and offers everything to you. If MDG had that kind of money and did that with Meteor, would you complain about it? No, you wouldn't. You'd talk about how incredible it is that they did that.

Using out-of-the-box functionality instead of "gluing" things together doesn't mean you're any less creative. If anything, it means you're more efficient and utilizing all of the functionality already available instead of re-inventing the wheel.

I don't know you, and I'm sure you're a great dev, as probably is @alexandernst - so why attack his opinion instead of just stating yours and sharing why yours may be more valid if people are willing to put in extra work?

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