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Significant JavaScript projects from 2006 to 2020

bestofjs.org

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Re: Significant JavaScript projects from 2006 to 2020

#52

Post by jitendrac »

grouseway wrote: post #24

I feel even a list of the 5 most impactful js projects should include Firebug. Firebug played a huge role in removing the shroud around javascript and making it approachable to a lot of people, helping them introspect others code, and improving their own code quality. After it, javascript became a beast you could tame rather than a source of endless frustration.

+1 for firebug, It really paved the way for skeleton for most of current inspector tools.

Re: Significant JavaScript projects from 2006 to 2020

#53

Post by legerdemain » 

  > Babel #13
  > First called `5to6`, the compiler Babel helped make the
  > ES6 version of JavaScript popular and was a key part of
  > React success.
It was called "6to5" for reasons that should be obvious.

But it's also just an irrelevant factoid on a timeline that at first seems to be a history of influential JS projects over the past 15 years, but in reality just takes some projects that are well-known today and kind of arbitrarily arranges them.

Re: Significant JavaScript projects from 2006 to 2020

#54

Post by petercooper »

Lammy wrote: post #45

Nobody remembers MooTools

For those into trivia, MooTools curiously popped up again a couple of years ago when the 'flatten' method was being discussed and it was suggested that it be called 'smoosh' to avoid breaking MooTools apps(!) https://github.com/tc39/proposal-flatMap/pull/56

Re: Significant JavaScript projects from 2006 to 2020

#55

Post by michaelrambeau »

This is Michael the author, thank you all for your feedback! This timeline was like a game, trying to find a balance between projects that made the history and bets for the future. The disclaimer explains some of the rules but of course the result is not perfect. I should have added that all projects mentioned are GitHub projects tracked by Best of JS app (the app I created in 2015) I totally agree about the importance of Firebug that I discovered in 2005 or 2006. Being able to debug JavaScript was such a liberation! JavaScript was no more just a toy language.

I also agree about some projects should have been mentioned, at least in the disclaimer, mainly Backbone and its friend Underscore because at the beginning of 2010s, it was a kind of standard to build clean apps in the browser, using a MVC pattern.

In addition of the Rising Stars projects https://risingstars.js.org/ that provides an overview by year, this timeline was the first attempt to provide a big picture about the landscape of the 10 last years, I will try to create something more thorough soon.

Re: Significant JavaScript projects from 2006 to 2020

#57

Post by Macha »

mikewhy wrote: post #37
captn3m0 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rome has zero deps, which is big win over the alternatives imo.

Still though, it casts a very wide net. I'm super fond of simplifying things and having fewer dependencies (one reason why I prefer TypeScript over Babel), but I'm not sure why I would want my test runner to ever care about formatting code, or why I would want my Markdown formatter to ever worry about bundling JavaScript files. Still, very excited to check it out!

I think tying an opinionated linter/code style tool to the rest of the tools is going to limit adoption. While people point to gofmt/prettier as examples of opinionated tools winning, Eslint (fully configurable) is still more popular by downloads than prettier (slightly configurable) and both are way more so than standard (not at all configurable).

Re: Significant JavaScript projects from 2006 to 2020

#58

Post by postalrat »

JamesSwift wrote: post #23
halfmatthalfcat wrote: post #5

Where's Backbone, Ember, Coffeescript (the OG transpiled lang), HTML5, CSS3, WASM, ect, etc. The road to today is paved with many influential projects.

And browserify, gulp, grunt, babel..

Babel for sure.

Re: Significant JavaScript projects from 2006 to 2020

#59

Post by egfx »

Sadly there are some glaring omissions.

How about Enyo the predecessor of React? If there was no Enyo there would be no React since a team member on Facebook was originally inspired by it ... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enyo_(software)

How about PhoneGap? A Javascript library that allowed you to write native mobile apps for the first time.

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