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FOAM: New JavaScript Framework by Google Engineers

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Re: FOAM: New JavaScript Framework by Google Engineers

#61

Post by orbifold »

quonn wrote: post #21
plainOldText wrote: post #5

Oh boy, yet another JavaScript framework. Colored me unimpressed; angular, backbone, ember, angular 2.0, react, etc. I feel like they're just reinventing the same wheel with a different spin. I wish people would actually spend their time creating a really revolutionary "framework" instead, better yet a programming environment, which would redefine how we write web programs. I'm envisioning a way to create software, w…

> I'm envisioning a way to create software, where while having a conversation with another person, we could collaboratively draw some shapes on the screen, connect them, then my program comes to life, evolves, scales up, scales down, etc. I believe programming should not be an endeavor accessible only to those adept at manipulating text files. There are many solutions (e.g. Simulink, GUI builders, the "connected node…

Speaking of mathematicians, they've also come up with an explanation how to model those graph based, "data flow" languages like Simulink or Blender's connected nodes abstractly. They are all examples of diagrams in some (traced, symmetric) monoidal/cartesian category. What is missing is a programming system that isn't tackling a specific area based on that model, that is it supports polymorphism. Haskell's arrows come close, it is relatively easy to model cartesian closed categories in it. But something better, with graphical visualization and maybe direct manipulation would certainly desirable.

Re: FOAM: New JavaScript Framework by Google Engineers

#62

Post by realityking »

exit wrote: post #51

looking at the todo example, i was perplexed by the way templates are inlined through comments: https://github.com/foam-framework/foam/blob/master/apps/todo... it led me to discover that the full text of a function can be reflected through .toString() ... i'm not sure i'd be happy to see this approach widely adopted though. it feels like a language hack, like maybe js needs a multiline literal string..

EcmaScript 6 has got us covered: https://developer.mozilla.org/de/docs/Web/JavaScript/Referen...

Re: FOAM: New JavaScript Framework by Google Engineers

#63

Post by narrowrail »

gasping wrote: post #50
jasim wrote: post #36

This is a bold take on a problem that a lot of people have written away as reinventing the wheel. But color me impressed! Unlike almost every other Javascript framework we've so far seen, FOAM makes the data model the primary entity in the system, which is a good idea. In the typical UI-driven development of web applications, the data model often gets modified without much thought and causes cascading complexity acro…

Bold, and beautiful!! Quick everyone, scrap all your existing frameworks and jump on the flavor of the week! Seriously though, I think it's borderline negligent to contribute any kind of hype to new javascript frameworks considering they are spraying out into the ecosystem like a broken fire hydrant. New javascript frameworks should be met with extreme skepticism, if not indifference, if we want this industry to be a…

It looks like this framework goes back ~3 years. So, why would you consider it the 'flavor of the week'? Because someone posted it to HN? That doesn't seem to be much of a threshold. Also, it looks like this framework could be of use in other languages aside from javascript.

Re: FOAM: New JavaScript Framework by Google Engineers

#65

Post by debacle »

[deleted] wrote: post #64
venomsnake wrote: post #32

> FOAM is a full-stack Reactive MVC Meta-Programming framework. 5 years ago I would have thought that this would have been the title of the tech section of Onion article ...

[deleted]

What I'm wondering is if it's better to be reactive or responsive.

Re: FOAM: New JavaScript Framework by Google Engineers

#66

Post by tomelders »

plainOldText wrote: post #5

Oh boy, yet another JavaScript framework. Colored me unimpressed; angular, backbone, ember, angular 2.0, react, etc. I feel like they're just reinventing the same wheel with a different spin. I wish people would actually spend their time creating a really revolutionary "framework" instead, better yet a programming environment, which would redefine how we write web programs. I'm envisioning a way to create software, w…

It's the smell of progress.

Re: FOAM: New JavaScript Framework by Google Engineers

#67

Post by jasim »

orbifold wrote: post #60
jasim wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think UI programming almost always need a framework than a library, under these definitions of Library and Framework: Library = independent objects and methods that your code invokes; Framework = entry point to the app, controls the event loop that calls your code, and lets you hook into its lifecycle methods. Under that definition, ReactJS is strictly a framework. But we tend to look at it as a library since unlik…

Actually it can be feasible and quite convenient to have control over the event loop yourself, this is what immediate mode ui libraries and computer games are doing, in a way facebook's flux architecture plus react facilitates that kind of UI programming for the browser.

Thanks for the pointer to Immediate Mode UI libraries.

Re: FOAM: New JavaScript Framework by Google Engineers

#68

Post by Nemcue »

forthefuture wrote: post #35
peterhunt wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

React is pretty revolutionary. It turns rendering code into a simple pure function, which is a necessary step for where you want to end up.

Benchmarks for React tell a different story. It's like two orders of magnitude slower than multiple alternatives. If you are performance critical, React is not possible to use in production, and likely will never be considering Facebook's development practices.

You're reading too much into benchmarks without understanding what the alternatives are.

Sure there are faster ways of rendering a template; just use format strings! Wow — super fast!

It's a nonsensical way of reasoning about frameworks.

Re: FOAM: New JavaScript Framework by Google Engineers

#70

Post by eropple »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #28
peterhunt wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

React is pretty revolutionary. It turns rendering code into a simple pure function, which is a necessary step for where you want to end up.

Rendering code is easy to express as pure functions...that is mostly how OpenGL and DirectX work, after all. React doesn't help very much with the state of your application (nor is it meant to). That being said, being able to treat the DOM as something to be rendered efficiently in immediate mode is quite useful.

OpenGL is a big ol' box of state in almost everything it does. I'm not sure how you get pure functions out of that.
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