Ask HN: Is Meteor.js dead? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Is Meteor.js dead?

#71

Post by lizmat » Sun, Apr 08, 2018, 5:08 PM UTC

jrs95 wrote: post #70

aogaili wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. https://github.com/meteor/meteor

https://github.com/Perl/perl5 Apparently it’s not the only thing that is as good as dead with activity on GitHub. Meteor might not literally be dead, but it may as well be. Don’t use it. Even MDG seems mostly focused on GraphQL these days (and that sucks, too. But that’s a whole different topic.)

Eh, that repo is a mirror. Issues are still handled by RT. And if you look at the actual activity, you see that it not quite dead yet (https://github.com/Perl/perl5/graphs/commit-activity). And afaik, Perl 5 is in code freeze at the moment in preparation for the yearly release in May.

Re: Ask HN: Is Meteor.js dead?

#72

Post by angersock » Sun, Apr 08, 2018, 5:53 PM UTC

roro5678 wrote: post #14

angersock wrote: post #9

We've been doing doubletime to migrate off of an old Meteor app, due to its bundling of old versions of node and really questionable use of Mongo. I think that, in the right hands, Meteor is a great prototyping tool--putting into production and scaling it though is a fool's errand.

We are in the same situation too, I am curious, you are migrating towards what and how ?

Phoenix and Postgres.

And while the Phoenix part has all kinds of issues--especially when you make it work with Mongo instead of Postgres and Ecto--it's waaaay better than the Meteor bilge we inherited.

EDIT: And honestly, at this point we all think that Rails or Node or anything else would've been a better move than Phoenix, but hey hindsight is 20/20 and we inherited the legacy Phoenix app.

Bet folks don't even know that those exist. :(

Re: Ask HN: Is Meteor.js dead?

#73

Post by angersock » Sun, Apr 08, 2018, 5:59 PM UTC

hexsprite wrote: post #41

angersock wrote: post #9

We've been doing doubletime to migrate off of an old Meteor app, due to its bundling of old versions of node and really questionable use of Mongo. I think that, in the right hands, Meteor is a great prototyping tool--putting into production and scaling it though is a fool's errand.

Meteor 1.6 supports Node 8.9.x. What's questionable about Meteor's use of Mongo? Reading the oplog? You don't need to use the reactivity if you don't want it. There is a simple API to either use polling or turn off reactivity altogether if you don't care about it.

Legacy. Meteor. App.

Doesn't matter what new versions support if we can't update things.

The reactivity choice was made for us (poorly).

Re: Ask HN: Is Meteor.js dead?

#74

Post by aogaili » Sun, Apr 08, 2018, 6:04 PM UTC

jrs95 wrote: post #70

aogaili wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. https://github.com/meteor/meteor

https://github.com/Perl/perl5 Apparently it’s not the only thing that is as good as dead with activity on GitHub. Meteor might not literally be dead, but it may as well be. Don’t use it. Even MDG seems mostly focused on GraphQL these days (and that sucks, too. But that’s a whole different topic.)

There are almost daily commits going to it, but the rate of commits is not the same as when a project started. By your logic any stable project on Github is dead. Also by your logic, when person grows in height until they reach their mid twenties and their growth stagnate, as they've reached their maximum potential, we can call them dead. Assuming you're above 25, by your logic you are dead as well.

If you spend little time at the forums you'll realize there are plenty of people using it with active community contributions and thriving open source projects and commercial businesses built on top of it.

Technology goes through phases (hype cycle) and Meteor is at a stable phase.

A lot of the comments here are ignorant about the the progress made in the last two years, to be able to form objective opinion, one need to proper research and not just listen to the FUD.

Re: Ask HN: Is Meteor.js dead?

#75

Post by VikR » Sun, Apr 08, 2018, 7:04 PM UTC

Some of the criticisms of Meteor are out of date. Last year Meteor added exact code splitting, making it a cutting-edge and industry-leading JavaScript build tool. Also, the criticisms of Meteor as something that doesn't scale are out of touch with the current state of the product. Pre-2017 Meteor had difficulty scaling due to its method of oplog tailing wiht Mongo. But last year Redis-Oplog made that a thing of the past. With regard to SQL and other databases, Apollo addresses scaling concerns.

As a relevant data point, Qualia uses Meteor and recently raised $30M.

https://blog.meteor.com/dynamic-imports-in-meteor-1-5-c61304...

https://blog.meteor.com/modernizing-the-real-estate-industry...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/omribarzilay/2018/03/07/qualia-...

Re: Ask HN: Is Meteor.js dead?

#76

Post by quickthrower2 » Mon, Apr 09, 2018, 1:06 AM UTC

rglover wrote: post #31

quickthrower2 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

I'd personally avoid Parse as it's been shut down. I worked with someone who had inherited a Parse-based app last year and we had to do a fair amount of gymnastics to get it working smoothly. That was just my personal experience, though. A good rule of thumb: if it works for you, use it. There's a lot of ballyhoo about keeping up with the tech Joneses which is mostly unnecessary. It's the most common excuse I see peo…

I like that it is open source, but the question is how well is it being maintained? Having said that one can self-maintain as I think it is NodeJS. That's what you'd have to do if you write your own Backend - so the only problem is how spaghetti like the code is.

Re: Ask HN: Is Meteor.js dead?

#77

Post by vlasky » Mon, Apr 09, 2018, 2:10 AM UTC

Gaelan wrote: post #12

Between GraphQL and React, I'm not sure how much Meteor is left in a modern "Meteor" app.

Our Meteor webapp designed for real-time vehicle tracking was built in 2015 using Blaze, DDP, Pub/Sub and Iron Router.

Today, our webapp continues to work better than ever with the above technologies thanks to the continuous improvements made to Meteor by the MDG and the community.

Our business currently has no use for GraphQL or React.

Re: Ask HN: Is Meteor.js dead?

#78

Post by rglover » Mon, Apr 09, 2018, 2:34 AM UTC

quickthrower2 wrote: post #76

rglover wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd personally avoid Parse as it's been shut down. I worked with someone who had inherited a Parse-based app last year and we had to do a fair amount of gymnastics to get it working smoothly. That was just my personal experience, though. A good rule of thumb: if it works for you, use it. There's a lot of ballyhoo about keeping up with the tech Joneses which is mostly unnecessary. It's the most common excuse I see peo…

I like that it is open source, but the question is how well is it being maintained? Having said that one can self-maintain as I think it is NodeJS. That's what you'd have to do if you write your own Backend - so the only problem is how spaghetti like the code is.

It’s just Node.js. All of the Meteor-related code can be removed if you really wanted and just rely on the build system. Even if you had to do a port to a vanilla Node.js app, a large reasonably well-structured app might take a month or two tops to port.

Side note: frameworks don’t write spaghetti, developers do.

Re: Ask HN: Is Meteor.js dead?

#79

Post by quickthrower2 » Mon, Apr 09, 2018, 4:41 AM UTC

rglover wrote: post #78

quickthrower2 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like that it is open source, but the question is how well is it being maintained? Having said that one can self-maintain as I think it is NodeJS. That's what you'd have to do if you write your own Backend - so the only problem is how spaghetti like the code is.

It’s just Node.js. All of the Meteor-related code can be removed if you really wanted and just rely on the build system. Even if you had to do a port to a vanilla Node.js app, a large reasonably well-structured app might take a month or two tops to port. Side note: frameworks don’t write spaghetti, developers do.

Oh I wasn't trying to say it is spaghetti because NodeJS :-). I was saying it might be spaghetti because thats how code sometime is.

Re: Ask HN: Is Meteor.js dead?

#80

Post by davidy123 » Mon, Apr 09, 2018, 1:47 PM UTC

Can_Not wrote: post #24

I never used meteor, but from what I understand it's functionality was, I currently use FeathersJS + SocketIO + VueJS (and nuxtJS for serverside rendering).

I tried FeathersJS for a recent project but ended up dropping it. Documentation was all over the place, many of the example repos didn't work out of the box, and I found some of their solutions were half baked. I also found their core ideas added as much mental overhead compared to "standard" express routes and so wasn't worth the proposition of consistently setting up routes. Maybe if you came in at the right moment when a release's documentation has settled down, outdated documentation is clearly marked, and a majority of users have settled on particular libraries, but that was not the case when I checked it.

I'm thinking of checking out Meteor now since on balance people here are saying it's good for prototyping at least, and I'd like some real-time functionality.