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

Announcing the first release of batman.js

batmanjs.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 78 posts

Re: Announcing the first release of batman.js

#11

Post by goodside »

timothya wrote: post #5

I'd like to see some examples in JavaScript, instead of CoffeeScript. Since at this point only a smaller subset of developers use CoffeeScript, I think it might be overall useful to more people if the provided examples used plain JavaScript (that, and CoffeeScript developers tend to understand JavaScript already, and may already be used to converting one to the other).

The subtext is that you should learn CoffeeScript. It's an alternative syntax, not a new language.

They wrote you a nice library and are giving it away under an MIT license. You don't get to pick the style they use to write the examples. That's like going to a science lecture and walking up to the speaker afterwards to say, "Hey, I think you have some great theories, but you really should lose that Australian accent of yours. Most scientists aren't from Australia, you know."

Re: Announcing the first release of batman.js

#12

Post by bprater »

antrix wrote: post #8
bprater wrote: post #6

From the site: "It gives us great pleasure to finally announce the release of batman.js to the JavaScript community today. This release represents the first code dump of something we’ve been working hard on at Shopify for a long time, so we’re very excited to get it into your hands and see what you do with it." I got zero value out of this lead. When you launch a product like this, please tell us why we'd want to use…

Just two sentences after that, it lists exactly what it offers. One click away is the homepage which has much more detail. Are you seriously _so busy_ that you can't read a couple of lines more? And if you really are, please do practice skimming!

My broad point was that in watching hundreds of projects launch via H!News -- that in this Facebook era, all of us are having less tolerance for doing the skimming you mention. When you are fortunate enough to make it to front-page of H!News -- make it count.

Re: Announcing the first release of batman.js

#13

Post by mcantelon »

goodside wrote: post #11
timothya wrote: post #5

I'd like to see some examples in JavaScript, instead of CoffeeScript. Since at this point only a smaller subset of developers use CoffeeScript, I think it might be overall useful to more people if the provided examples used plain JavaScript (that, and CoffeeScript developers tend to understand JavaScript already, and may already be used to converting one to the other).

The subtext is that you should learn CoffeeScript. It's an alternative syntax, not a new language. They wrote you a nice library and are giving it away under an MIT license. You don't get to pick the style they use to write the examples. That's like going to a science lecture and walking up to the speaker afterwards to say, "Hey, I think you have some great theories, but you really should lose that Australian accent…

>It's an alternative syntax

Right... "alternative"... so makes sense to not give examples entirely in it unless your framework is intended solely for Coffeescript users.

Re: Announcing the first release of batman.js

#14

Post by [deleted] »

antrix wrote: post #8
bprater wrote: post #6

From the site: "It gives us great pleasure to finally announce the release of batman.js to the JavaScript community today. This release represents the first code dump of something we’ve been working hard on at Shopify for a long time, so we’re very excited to get it into your hands and see what you do with it." I got zero value out of this lead. When you launch a product like this, please tell us why we'd want to use…

Just two sentences after that, it lists exactly what it offers. One click away is the homepage which has much more detail. Are you seriously _so busy_ that you can't read a couple of lines more? And if you really are, please do practice skimming!

[deleted]

Re: Announcing the first release of batman.js

#15

Post by nciagra »

bprater wrote: post #6

From the site: "It gives us great pleasure to finally announce the release of batman.js to the JavaScript community today. This release represents the first code dump of something we’ve been working hard on at Shopify for a long time, so we’re very excited to get it into your hands and see what you do with it." I got zero value out of this lead. When you launch a product like this, please tell us why we'd want to use…

Sure, I'll break it down: batman.js is a JavaScript framework for rich JavaScript applications. It's designed to make development as fast and as painless as possible for developers and designers while giving them lots of power.

We designed everything around a number of primary goals such as convention over configuration, HTML-based views, and the principle of least surprise. This is something we're using at Shopify in our future projects, so it's meeting those goals while coming out of real work.

If you want more info, the features page (http://batmanjs.org/features.html) has a list of everything we're trying to do, and the examples page (http://batmanjs.org/examples.html) has a few usage examples. There's still only a couple, but I'm working as quickly as possible to build out the gallery.

And of course, let me know if there's anything else I can answer about the framework. I hope that helped clear it up a bit, though!

Re: Announcing the first release of batman.js

#16

Post by TrevorBurnham »

timothya wrote: post #5

I'd like to see some examples in JavaScript, instead of CoffeeScript. Since at this point only a smaller subset of developers use CoffeeScript, I think it might be overall useful to more people if the provided examples used plain JavaScript (that, and CoffeeScript developers tend to understand JavaScript already, and may already be used to converting one to the other).

In some cases (e.g. "class Box extends Batman.Object"), the corresponding JS would be much more verbose and less immediately grok-able.

I think CoffeeScript is mainstream enough at this point that CoffeeScript-based documentation is a fine thing. Especially since, as they say at the top of the page, Batman.js "is written in CoffeeScript and its API is developed with CoffeeScript in mind."

Re: Announcing the first release of batman.js

#18

Post by [deleted] »

mcantelon wrote: post #13
goodside wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The subtext is that you should learn CoffeeScript. It's an alternative syntax, not a new language. They wrote you a nice library and are giving it away under an MIT license. You don't get to pick the style they use to write the examples. That's like going to a science lecture and walking up to the speaker afterwards to say, "Hey, I think you have some great theories, but you really should lose that Australian accent…

>It's an alternative syntax Right... "alternative"... so makes sense to not give examples entirely in it unless your framework is intended solely for Coffeescript users.

[deleted]

Re: Announcing the first release of batman.js

#19

Post by masterzora »

goodside wrote: post #11
timothya wrote: post #5

I'd like to see some examples in JavaScript, instead of CoffeeScript. Since at this point only a smaller subset of developers use CoffeeScript, I think it might be overall useful to more people if the provided examples used plain JavaScript (that, and CoffeeScript developers tend to understand JavaScript already, and may already be used to converting one to the other).

The subtext is that you should learn CoffeeScript. It's an alternative syntax, not a new language. They wrote you a nice library and are giving it away under an MIT license. You don't get to pick the style they use to write the examples. That's like going to a science lecture and walking up to the speaker afterwards to say, "Hey, I think you have some great theories, but you really should lose that Australian accent…

They wrote you a nice library and are giving it away under an MIT license. You don't get to pick the style they use to write the examples.

This is a response to something nobody's saying.

Obviously if they write it they get to choose pretty much everything about it. Nobody is disputing such a thing.

However, if one of the goals in releasing this is to be maximally useful, isn't the fact that raw Javascript is more readily understandable to more people a good thing to point out? Especially since it's highly likely that the team actually has the ability to do normal JS just as easily.

If they disagree with such a goal, though, they can feel free to do whatever they want.

Post reply on HN