Live data from Hacker News

Google Web Starter Kit

developers.google.com

11–20 of 81 posts

Re: Google Web Starter Kit

#11
post #8
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So? What's wrong with this? Why would someone check-in all the 3rd party code, when same can be described in package.json & downloaded again.

I started seeing the floating dependency approach at smaller places and personally consider it a bad pattern. You get everything you depend on, stuff it into a folder named third-party, and check it in forever (or until security bugs, features you need, etc). Include all and any licences, this is important. When dealing with any software that's supposed to be our there for decades, the last thing you want it to have…

I have seen this first hand at a acquisition. Missing licenses resulted in the entire FE team working in finding missing licenses/find alternative module with proper license or worst case scenario; implement our own solution. This literally took 1 week. Shrink-wrap would have saved us a bunch of $$$.

Re: Google Web Starter Kit

#12
post #7

An opinionated Web Starter Kit with no libraries or frameworks included? What is Google's opinion on which way to build a web application, roll your own?

> What is Google's opinion on which way to build a web application

Angular! Wait, Angular 2. No wait, Polymer. Sorry, how could I be so rude - Progressive Web App with no framework.

Re: Google Web Starter Kit

#13
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I started seeing the floating dependency approach at smaller places and personally consider it a bad pattern. You get everything you depend on, stuff it into a folder named third-party, and check it in forever (or until security bugs, features you need, etc). Include all and any licences, this is important. When dealing with any software that's supposed to be our there for decades, the last thing you want it to have…

I have seen this first hand at a acquisition. Missing licenses resulted in the entire FE team working in finding missing licenses/find alternative module with proper license or worst case scenario; implement our own solution. This literally took 1 week. Shrink-wrap would have saved us a bunch of $$$.

Yes, it takes one to go through that experience once, to fully appreciate the effort. I also look at that one downvote to my post, and can't help but think that somebody is up for a very nasty surprise in his career.

Re: Google Web Starter Kit

#14
post #7

An opinionated Web Starter Kit with no libraries or frameworks included? What is Google's opinion on which way to build a web application, roll your own?

> What is Google's opinion on which way to build a web application Angular! Wait, Angular 2. No wait, Polymer. Sorry, how could I be so rude - Progressive Web App with no framework.

I prefer a combination of Dart and Google Web Toolkit.

Re: Google Web Starter Kit

#15
Nobody new to web is going to understand this stuff and people who would really understand this advice could already give it themselves. Not sure who the target audience for this is supposed to be but why do we need yet-another-web-boilerplate

Re: Google Web Starter Kit

#16
> Powered by Material Design Lite

That's a curious choice. MDL isn't being developed further and is being replaced by "Material Components for the web" https://github.com/material-components/material-components-w...

From https://github.com/google/material-design-lite:

  Limited support
  Material Design Lite is now in limited support, with development having moved to the Material Components for the web repository.
  No further development is taking place in MDL by the core team, but we are happy to review PRs, fix critical bugs and push out new releases. No breaking changes will be accepted.

Re: Google Web Starter Kit

#17
post #2

> .gitignore: node_modules Wait, did I miss something? Wasn't it google who started the "vendor everything" philosophy in the first place?

Vendoring packages doesn't mean vendoring in git. Vendoring in git is a terrible idea (which for some absurd reason the golang community has decided isn't...). It pollutes your tree, your history, your blames, your searches, makes your git repository massive, etc etc. Node would be even worse.

We vendor in git by having a master repo, inside of which you have a submodule for our app and others for the dependencies.

That way we can track and keep them in sync without having the problems you described.

Re: Google Web Starter Kit

#19
post #4
post #2

> .gitignore: node_modules Wait, did I miss something? Wasn't it google who started the "vendor everything" philosophy in the first place?

So? What's wrong with this? Why would someone check-in all the 3rd party code, when same can be described in package.json & downloaded again.

A lot of folks depend on third party sources for packages. Then Guthub goes down and tgey cand deploy their site.

Re: Google Web Starter Kit

#20
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I started seeing the floating dependency approach at smaller places and personally consider it a bad pattern. You get everything you depend on, stuff it into a folder named third-party, and check it in forever (or until security bugs, features you need, etc). Include all and any licences, this is important. When dealing with any software that's supposed to be our there for decades, the last thing you want it to have…

I have seen this first hand at a acquisition. Missing licenses resulted in the entire FE team working in finding missing licenses/find alternative module with proper license or worst case scenario; implement our own solution. This literally took 1 week. Shrink-wrap would have saved us a bunch of $$$.

You have to be careful about the type of licenses as well. Happened to me, luckily it was a tiny library and there was an alternative available.

See anything with a "cute" license, such as WTFPL? Don't use it for work.

Post reply on HN