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The Linux Foundation Unites the JavaScript Community for Open Web Development

js.foundation

51–60 of 134 posts

Re: The Linux Foundation Unites the JavaScript Community for Open Web Development

#51
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that people can contribute is great, the fact that it is impossible to get started in modern JS development without making dozens of seemingly inscrutable choices is not.

That's because "modern javascript" is not there yet, it's still in an experimental phase, we need transpilers and other stuff to use features that are not in a finished state. It will get better with time.

And that getting better process is what people mean by reducing fragmentation.

Re: The Linux Foundation Unites the JavaScript Community for Open Web Development

#52
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that people can contribute is great, the fact that it is impossible to get started in modern JS development without making dozens of seemingly inscrutable choices is not.

But that can (and is) solved by either just "picking one of the big ones" and moving on, or by using even more tools layered on top to abstract away a lot of those choices (don't know anything about how to start with react? Just use react-create-app and go from there).

Then a couple years later you've learned a lot of arcane details about something that has already fallen out of fashion. It's not the end of the world but it's not optimal.

Re: The Linux Foundation Unites the JavaScript Community for Open Web Development

#53
I thought this was interesting at first. An effort to push the JS environment towards standardization is a much needed initiative.

Then I saw the "initial projects" list.

"Appium, contributed by Sauce Labs, is an open source Node.js server..."

"Interledger.js, contributed by Ripple, enables instant payments and micropayments in any currency..."

"JerryScript, contributed by Samsung, is a lightweight, fully-featured JavaScript engine for Internet of Things..."

"Node-RED, contributed by IBM, is a flow-based programming environment built on Node.js..."

This made it very clear that the founding members of the "JS Foundation" are not interested in developing and promoting the best open source tools, those tools which are most deserving of broad adaption. To them, this is a way to promote their own tools. They aren't doing this for the good of the of JS ecosystem, they are doing it to push their own brands on developers.

Re: The Linux Foundation Unites the JavaScript Community for Open Web Development

#54
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First the term. By fragmentation I mean two things: 1) we have many libraries doing the same thing. 2) the implementation is JS is not the same in every environment. If you are spending most of your time writing other languages which have a standard library, I can understand your opinion. However, I see fragmentation as: 1) It introduces the opportunity everyone on the planet to give a shot at implementing something…

The fact that people can contribute is great, the fact that it is impossible to get started in modern JS development without making dozens of seemingly inscrutable choices is not.

Plain old HTML, CSS, and ES5 still work. You aren't forced to install Node and Gulp and any of those things. So I rather much thing the use of the word "impossible" is way out of line here.

Re: The Linux Foundation Unites the JavaScript Community for Open Web Development

#55
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has such an argangment ever worked in practice? I have read here on HN about how the Apache brand is used as a dumping ground for zombie projects. Why would it be different for the Linux Foundation?

Isnt CouchDB an Apache project? Seems to me like it get's updated

~45% of the releases listed on the Apache website are older than a year (900 out of 1961).

Source: https://projects.apache.org/releases.html

Re: The Linux Foundation Unites the JavaScript Community for Open Web Development

#56
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that people can contribute is great, the fact that it is impossible to get started in modern JS development without making dozens of seemingly inscrutable choices is not.

Plain old HTML, CSS, and ES5 still work. You aren't forced to install Node and Gulp and any of those things. So I rather much thing the use of the word "impossible" is way out of line here.

They are the foundations, and I recommended them in this very thread. But that's not what most of us would call "modern JS development". The amount of extra stuff between the foundations and current "best practices" is exactly the problem.

Re: The Linux Foundation Unites the JavaScript Community for Open Web Development

#57
post #53

I thought this was interesting at first. An effort to push the JS environment towards standardization is a much needed initiative. Then I saw the "initial projects" list. "Appium, contributed by Sauce Labs, is an open source Node.js server..." "Interledger.js, contributed by Ripple, enables instant payments and micropayments in any currency..." "JerryScript, contributed by Samsung, is a lightweight, fully-featured Ja…

Though nice to see moment and webpack

Re: The Linux Foundation Unites the JavaScript Community for Open Web Development

#58
post #53

I thought this was interesting at first. An effort to push the JS environment towards standardization is a much needed initiative. Then I saw the "initial projects" list. "Appium, contributed by Sauce Labs, is an open source Node.js server..." "Interledger.js, contributed by Ripple, enables instant payments and micropayments in any currency..." "JerryScript, contributed by Samsung, is a lightweight, fully-featured Ja…

I see a lot of comments here interpreting this as a push towards standardizing certain tools, yet I don't see anything on the site that suggests that is their mission, nor do I see any way they could possibly effect that kind of change.

There seems to be some kind of messaging problem in that we are reading totally different things into what this foundation is about.

Can you share why you think this foundation is trying to "push [any] brands on developers"? I just don't get it.

Re: The Linux Foundation Unites the JavaScript Community for Open Web Development

#59
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that people can contribute is great, the fact that it is impossible to get started in modern JS development without making dozens of seemingly inscrutable choices is not.

Plain old HTML, CSS, and ES5 still work. You aren't forced to install Node and Gulp and any of those things. So I rather much thing the use of the word "impossible" is way out of line here.

But for significant pieces of work it is still a hurdle which you must cross. Unless you're writing vanilla ES5 without any dependencies, you have to consider package management, build tools, how to load your modules, before even getting onto transpilation, minification etc.

I can see what's so great about the JS community, but the fixed cost to get to actual production-ready development is pretty high. And rolling your own bootstrapping tools seem pretty pointless given the longevity of any particular tool being the one to recommend. #jsfatigue!

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