Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Imagine a Beowulf Cluster of JavaScript Frameworks

tomdale.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 27 posts

Re: Imagine a Beowulf Cluster of JavaScript Frameworks

#11

Post by akkartik »

ahoyhere wrote: post #7

Tom indirectly calls Thomas Fuchs (author of Scriptaculous, Zepto, Emile, core committer to Prototype.js, etc.) disingenuous because... " Of course Mr. Fuchs is able to tell you which JavaScript library will precisely match your requirements -- his job is writing JavaScript libraries !" [Emphasis, and presumed outrage, his.] Come now. That's simply false, and if you think about it, silly. "He writes open source frame…

I don't know enough to contribute to this debate, but I found the tone of your comment more distracting than that of the article. (I come from the 'less code is better' camp in lisp http://github.com/akkartik/wart, so I have no axe to grind.)

Re: Imagine a Beowulf Cluster of JavaScript Frameworks

#12

Post by jashkenas » 

    How much of Flow’s nearly 900k of (minified!) JavaScript 
    do you think is the application developers filling in 
    the deficiencies in Backbone?
I'm trying really hard to resist saying something overwhelmingly snarky about SproutCore apologists, but this article is trying to be a slap in the face of Backbone.js, and libraries like it ... so if you want to have that discussion -- bring it. You think 843K of JavaScript is too large for a truly comprehensive and gorgeous app like Flow? The SproutCore hello world app for a broken-looking table view weighs 717K, when measured in the same way.

But there's a bigger question here, when picking on a library that's only been around for 6 months: Has anything on the scale and professionalism of Flow ever been accomplished by a SproutCore app, in SproutCore's 4 years of existence?

I think that the proof is in the pudding:

http://www.sproutcore.com/showcase/ (2 of the 4 belong to the SC team)

http://documentcloud.github.com/backbone/#examples

'nuff said.

Re: Imagine a Beowulf Cluster of JavaScript Frameworks

#13

Post by madrobby »

slexaxton wrote: post #9
ahoyhere wrote: post #7

Tom indirectly calls Thomas Fuchs (author of Scriptaculous, Zepto, Emile, core committer to Prototype.js, etc.) disingenuous because... " Of course Mr. Fuchs is able to tell you which JavaScript library will precisely match your requirements -- his job is writing JavaScript libraries !" [Emphasis, and presumed outrage, his.] Come now. That's simply false, and if you think about it, silly. "He writes open source frame…

Mostly agreed, and well articulated. Though, the point I believe that Tom was trying to make about Diaz having to ask Thomas to change things was more valid with the links that were likely stripped from your comment: https://github.com/madrobby/emile/pull/7 While you already argue against something like ender.js being valid, Tom's argument, which preceded your comment (and which seemed confirmed by Thomas' post, imo)…

The point is that Emile is 50 lines of code and can be wrapped up for any purpose in about 2 minutes (export to some object).

Dustin wanted a different API to call upon, so he had to change some stuff, again relatively easy, because it basically fits on a screen in a text editor.

Let's not forget, all of this is open source, and it's meant for adaptation, forking and to be built upon. (Note that Emile was very much a proof-of-concept, with no emphasis on beatuiful, reusable code; it was written as a teaching tool for a talk on CSS animation I gave two years ago at Fronteers.)

Re: Imagine a Beowulf Cluster of JavaScript Frameworks

#14

Post by ahoyhere »

akkartik wrote: post #11
ahoyhere wrote: post #7

Tom indirectly calls Thomas Fuchs (author of Scriptaculous, Zepto, Emile, core committer to Prototype.js, etc.) disingenuous because... " Of course Mr. Fuchs is able to tell you which JavaScript library will precisely match your requirements -- his job is writing JavaScript libraries !" [Emphasis, and presumed outrage, his.] Come now. That's simply false, and if you think about it, silly. "He writes open source frame…

I don't know enough to contribute to this debate, but I found the tone of your comment more distracting than that of the article. (I come from the 'less code is better' camp in lisp http://github.com/akkartik/wart , so I have no axe to grind.)

Fair enough. You must have also hated the original article then ;)

Re: Imagine a Beowulf Cluster of JavaScript Frameworks

#15

Post by tlrobinson »

I believe the solution to this problem isn't tiny frameworks, it's better tools and/or languages.

Closure Compiler and GWT do a great job of stripping dead code. Cappuccino has a tool I wrote that attempts to analyze your application and remove unused files from the final bundle of code. It could do a lot better though.

One thing these tools have in common is static typing vastly improves their ability to remove unused code. Perhaps JavaScript and other very dynamic languages aren't ideal for large web applications built with large frameworks.

I like the idea of optional static typing. For example, a language in which you can rapidly prototype without paying close attention to strict type rules, but later you can "solidify" your code by enabling static typing. Is anyone aware of a language like that?

Edit: now that I think about it, that's basically what Closure Compiler is

Re: Imagine a Beowulf Cluster of JavaScript Frameworks

#16

Post by ahoyhere »

tomdale wrote: post #8
ahoyhere wrote: post #7

Tom indirectly calls Thomas Fuchs (author of Scriptaculous, Zepto, Emile, core committer to Prototype.js, etc.) disingenuous because... " Of course Mr. Fuchs is able to tell you which JavaScript library will precisely match your requirements -- his job is writing JavaScript libraries !" [Emphasis, and presumed outrage, his.] Come now. That's simply false, and if you think about it, silly. "He writes open source frame…

Hi Amy, I have tremendous respect for both you and Thomas and I'm sorry if the anything in my post came off as disrespectful. My point in saying that his "job" was writing JavaScript frameworks (which I have since updated to better characterize his relationship to them) was not that there was anything untoward going on. My point is simply that he is comfortable making the tweaks and modifications necessary to wield t…

Hi Tom, it's hard to believe your snarky-sounding italics were intended innocently when you also had such lines as "Mr. Fuchs has apparently never heard of dependency hell." That is clearly meant as a personal jab, one way or another.

That said, it's true what you wrote, that lots of apps grow bigger and need more functionality as they grow. But "need more" is not the same as "use 100% of a library," so that doesn't really refute Thomas' original argument.

You're reacting negatively to insinuations and attitudes that, as far as I can tell, don't exist on a broad scale at all. Most people you meet in the JS community use frameworks and are clearly not anti-framework. It seems to me (based on the tweets from you and @wycats) that you think this whole thing is about Sproutcore. It's not.

Thomas wasn't "insinuating" anything about Sproutcore any more than he was "insinuating" anything about Prototype.js, another monolithic framework.

Re: Imagine a Beowulf Cluster of JavaScript Frameworks

#17

Post by polotek »

Left a comment there, might as well leave it here too.

An interesting debate (minus the personal attack stuff). But I think the problem is that both sides are trying to warp and narrow the playing field to suit themselves. The truth is there are plenty of projects that will never need all the machinery of SproutCore. And there are plenty of projects that start out too small and then struggle to grow more complex. Choosing your tools is hard. It should be hard and it should be taken seriously. Neither side should be trying to convince people that it’s an easy decision.

- "This is why you should always just start with SproutCore". - "This is why you should just start small and integrate micro-frameworks as needed".

Both bogus arguments really.

I’m also quite sure that neither side really wants to disparage the other side. They just want to make sure their own side isn’t being disparaged or misrepresented. This is what most internet arguments are made of unfortunately :)

What would be more awesome IMO is if we started talking about when it’s a good idea to take either approach. Let’s hear some use cases. And let’s stop using Twitter as an example. There is only 1 Twitter and their requirements are not going to be representative of the web dev community at large.

Re: Imagine a Beowulf Cluster of JavaScript Frameworks

#18

Post by ahoyhere »

slexaxton wrote: post #9
ahoyhere wrote: post #7

Tom indirectly calls Thomas Fuchs (author of Scriptaculous, Zepto, Emile, core committer to Prototype.js, etc.) disingenuous because... " Of course Mr. Fuchs is able to tell you which JavaScript library will precisely match your requirements -- his job is writing JavaScript libraries !" [Emphasis, and presumed outrage, his.] Come now. That's simply false, and if you think about it, silly. "He writes open source frame…

Mostly agreed, and well articulated. Though, the point I believe that Tom was trying to make about Diaz having to ask Thomas to change things was more valid with the links that were likely stripped from your comment: https://github.com/madrobby/emile/pull/7 While you already argue against something like ender.js being valid, Tom's argument, which preceded your comment (and which seemed confirmed by Thomas' post, imo)…

Slexy, I didn't know about this. Because 5 days ago, I was too sick to do anything but lie on the sofa and moan, and Thomas was taking care of me while holding down the business all by himself. It's unfortunate that Dustin assumed that not hearing from Thomas in just a few days meant that Thomas was angry, ignoring him, or whatever.

But nevertheless, Emile's not only open source, it's MIT-licensed. Dustin can do whatever he wants with it, any time!

Re: Imagine a Beowulf Cluster of JavaScript Frameworks

#19

Post by slexaxton »

madrobby wrote: post #13
slexaxton wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mostly agreed, and well articulated. Though, the point I believe that Tom was trying to make about Diaz having to ask Thomas to change things was more valid with the links that were likely stripped from your comment: https://github.com/madrobby/emile/pull/7 While you already argue against something like ender.js being valid, Tom's argument, which preceded your comment (and which seemed confirmed by Thomas' post, imo)…

The point is that Emile is 50 lines of code and can be wrapped up for any purpose in about 2 minutes (export to some object). Dustin wanted a different API to call upon, so he had to change some stuff, again relatively easy, because it basically fits on a screen in a text editor. Let's not forget, all of this is open source, and it's meant for adaptation, forking and to be built upon. (Note that Emile was very much a…

I agree, but I think the point of Tom originally linking it was to show that Dustin had integrated a micro-framework (from you), and couldn't get a response from you (even to say the stuff you mention above) and eventually closed the ticket.

It's not my own commentary, though. I was just clarifying to Amy why the argument that seemed entirely unrelated was at least tangentially related. Personally, I would have just modified it and went on my way :D

Re: Imagine a Beowulf Cluster of JavaScript Frameworks

#20

Post by slexaxton »

ahoyhere wrote: post #18
slexaxton wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mostly agreed, and well articulated. Though, the point I believe that Tom was trying to make about Diaz having to ask Thomas to change things was more valid with the links that were likely stripped from your comment: https://github.com/madrobby/emile/pull/7 While you already argue against something like ender.js being valid, Tom's argument, which preceded your comment (and which seemed confirmed by Thomas' post, imo)…

Slexy, I didn't know about this. Because 5 days ago, I was too sick to do anything but lie on the sofa and moan, and Thomas was taking care of me while holding down the business all by himself. It's unfortunate that Dustin assumed that not hearing from Thomas in just a few days meant that Thomas was angry, ignoring him, or whatever. But nevertheless, Emile's not only open source, it's MIT-licensed. Dustin can do what…

Unrelated to the OP, but related to this: I get that it's real life, and people forget that all the time on the internet. You should start feeling better soon. Forealz. I demand it. CFS sounds terrible and we're all rooting for you to figure out a real solution despite shitty doctor luck. Many <3z.
Post reply on HN