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The Linux Foundation Unites the JavaScript Community for Open Web Development

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

#101

Post by opendomain »

cwyers wrote: post #77
davidgerard wrote: post #35

"founding members include Bocoup, IBM, Ripple, Samsung, Sauce Labs, Sense Tecnic Systems, SitePen, StackPath, University of Westminster and WebsiteSetup." There's a name missing there I would have expected to see. Starts with M. Mo... mo ... something.

That's a really odd list of founding members, period. And yeah, managing to do this without having ONE of: * Mozilla * Google * Microsoft * Apple * Adobe * Facebook * eBay Is just... weird. But they have IBM and Samsung.

* Mozilla * Google * Microsoft * Adobe *Facebook

DID work together to try to help standardize the web platform [1] a few years ago.

Unfortunately, it failed, mostly because of politics.

[1] http://WebPlatform.Com

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

#102

Post by tracker1 »

Pigo wrote: post #86
spraak wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Though nice to see moment and webpack

Agreed, at least with webpack. My number one gripe with moment is that I have to shim it in when using webpack. It still expects to be added to global scope, just like jquery. I'd really like to find a modular version, or another project that has as much functionality.

I haven't had any problem with `require('moment')` doesn't leak into my global scope. jQuery is a different story, given how plugins tend to work.

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

#103

Post by tracker1 »

inimino wrote: post #31
kowdermeister wrote: post #20

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.

That's what boilerplates, and even generation tooling like yo is there for.

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

#104

Post by throwaway98237 »

ysavir wrote: 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…

Since when has, as relates to the web, standardization above all else been a thing. The web's design was intentionally decentralized and has led to occasional Cambrian Era level explosions of features and tools, that simply manifest. If we "try" to make the next platform, we'll probably fail. If we keep on keeping on, and let it happen, we will certainly succeed.

Centralized, profit driven organizations certainly benefit from having a clear, standard road-map with which to direct their resource deployment so as to maximize return on investment. Their investment. Not to maximize community value.

Standardization of the web will be the death of the web. Building the web-browsers on standards has forced corporations to make their flavor of browser compatible with the world wide web, keeping them from making a proprietary www. But, to standardize a language is a whole other thing. Languages are best when they are maximally flexible, so they do not constrict one from expressing in the world what is currently only in one's imagination.

That is, in my opinion, why despite the crappy design of JavaScript it has been so successful. There are not many languages with less restrictions. Take that away and we'll have a whole bunch of Walmarts, all the same implementation of the same super efficient product with great user experiences for 98% of users. But as the web becomes the global commons, for an Earth with a population of 7.125 billion, well 2% is still 145 million people. So, if you want the perfect solution, the final answer, then standardization requires you to write-off those people, if you want to be intellectually honest about it.

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

#105

Post by tracker1 »

inimino wrote: post #88
tlrobinson wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Such is life in programming. But feel free to continue using jQuery if you feel all the new stuff isn't worthwhile. IMHO the sweet spot for picking up new JS tech is about a year or two after it first starts appearing on Hacker News.

> Such is life in programming. Actually no, the technology churn is much higher in JavaScript-land than most anywhere else.

React is what 3-4yo now... given Redux is less than 2 years, and there was a LOT of churn on flux-like frameworks. But React + Redux will likely not go anywhere for the next 5+ years, it's already pretty well distilled. Similar tooling and alternatives will still be present, but this happens in any vibrant ecosystem. There was a similar burst in the alt.Net space before ASP.Net MVC and razor came out... even then there has been alternatives introduced.

You're not talking about a single application and platform. You're talking about the most flexible set of cross platform rendering engines ever created. How many UI toolkits are there for Windows, Linux and macOS for native apps, now add Android and iOS... The browser targets all of them, and the base app toolkits pretty much target them all, and still being more flexible and capable than what came before. Expand this to the number of tools available. How could this be anything but echoed in the JS sphere.

Given the shear breadth of Web development alone, let alone server-side, IoT, Desktop, embedded, mobile and who knows where else, how can there be anything but a lot of options and diversity.

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

#106

Post by tracker1 »

inimino wrote: post #56
moron4hire wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Start with understanding \JS... then understand ES6 and CommonJS style modules. From there, understand that babel is just a tool to let you use new syntax, which has stabilized a tot since ES6, there's a few bits for async still baking, but that's to be expected. Beyond this is the node-style callback, and more about Promises and async.

These are the core of it all... from there, it's a matter of picking the lego pieces you want to use. What I described above is no more complex than the JVM or extended .Net APIs, especially when you pick all the target options there... in fact the footprint is a lot smaller. Yes, it's a little harder to build something with the 2000 piece lego generic pack than it is with the guided here's a pirate ship with all the parts laid out. But that's what engineering is all about.

If you're really stuck, start with a boilerplate or starter generator tool, there's a few of them for whatever direction you are leaning. Don't worry about picking "the right one"... there is no true path. No matter what you pick, you're going to hit a wall that conflicts with your sensibilities. Angular has the biggest adoption of any web framework ever and only has a 44% approval rating for reuse. That means a LOT of people pick wrong. Adapt, learn, grow...

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

#107

Post by tracker1 »

flueedo wrote: post #43
onion2k wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are two schools of thought. The first is that you should optimise for the platform you're targeting, so a fragmented JS world is a good thing because you optimise for different things depending on where your code is going to run. The second school of thought is that you should optimise for development, and you should have the same language everywhere even if that means slightly less efficient code. For example,…

Yep, and, not that having to learn and become acquainted with shortcomings of new sets of languages/tools every other year isn't a fact of life for many devs that one ought to just accept. But having something run just (or as close as possible to) the same across many platforms make it more likely that that knowledge you acquired will remain among your best options when approaching a wide range of problems for a long…

Java 4 FOREVER!!!! f*ck maven... we like complex Ant configs... Generics can go to hell.

I mean this is a bit of hyperbole, but the point is that languages and platforms evolve, and given that JS has a bigger target surface than anything else in the history of computing, with more resources than anything else ever being poured into it, multiplied by approaches and opinions, how can it not be diverse. The world doesn't have the same houses everywhere either... Oh noes, they're building different styles of roofs over there.. the sky is falling.

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

#108

Post by na85 »

ggregoire wrote: post #94

Not sure why this announce is so upvoted (maybe because the title is full of buzzwords?). If we look at this announce: * the jQuery foundation (jQuery + jQuery UI) becomes the JS foundation (jQuery + jQuery UI + IBM + Samsung + unknown companies) * the list of founding members is awkward. IBM to unite the JavaScript community? IBM is the company who creates things like JSONx [1]. These founders have done nothing for…

>Where are the main actors like Facebook, Google, Microsoft or Netflix?

I'd argue that the main actors (and others) have driven the web backwards, not forwards. They've done this by the push towards capturing consumers in a walled garden, the rejection of open standards, the embrace of DRM, the selling of user private data for profit, etc.

You listed companies I'd invite to sit on the board of some kind of User Tracking Foundation, but not anything to do with open web development.

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

#109

Post by tracker1 »

randall wrote: post #72
fenomas wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never understood this complaint. JS is used everywhere from browsers to servers to native apps to IoT. Does there really need to be One True Framework/Linter/Build tool/etc?Is it really that big a problem that people have made a lot of different tools and libraries because they're solving a lot of different problems?

I think the problem is keeping up. It's simple if you can pay attention, but if you're still on angular 1.x because you have other things to worry about, the fragmentation and pace means you can get years behind if you're not careful. It's not like ruby has another package manager every 6 months. I agree the many implementations probably are a feature, not a bug, but still induce fatigue. It's too easy to get behind.

I only very loosely followed Node/npm for the first few years, as I was mostly working on windows. 0.8 kind of worked, and 0.10 was the first version that really worked, and npm was finally baked enough. That said, the few binary modules you came across rarely worked in windows, and there were some rough cuts along the way.

I know what the pain/churn was like then... I mean it's overwhelming, build chains, task runners, configuration files, tools changing left and right, exponential (for a while) growth... Not to mention more functional approaches clashing paradigms, the detour of bower, less vs sass vs whatever... It was a huge shift. But the backdrop has settled a lot... Yes, there are new options out every other day, but it's not like it was for a long while.

Node 0.12 through current is mainly about bringing in new JS engines and performance improvements and less about introducing sweeping changes. Webpack and Babel are now staples... ES6 modules will shake up the npm ecosystem a bit for the next while, but if you're using Webpack + Babel, you'll probably notice it less.

There's still growth, but the churn isn't quite as massive if you just concentrate on the core (JS, npm, webpack, babel) and less about specific modules (lego blocks) until you need a given brick.

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

#110

Post by ysavir »

throwaway98237 wrote: post #104
ysavir wrote: 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…

Since when has, as relates to the web, standardization above all else been a thing. The web's design was intentionally decentralized and has led to occasional Cambrian Era level explosions of features and tools, that simply manifest. If we "try" to make the next platform, we'll probably fail. If we keep on keeping on, and let it happen, we will certainly succeed. Centralized, profit driven organizations certainly ben…

That's a great attitude for the browser--and I completely agree that decentralization is important for the browser--but does your opinion here extend to server-side JS as well?
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