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"Getting started with Ember.Js is easy." - No it isn't

discuss.emberjs.com

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Re: "Getting started with Ember.Js is easy." - No it isn't

#191

Post by mark_l_watson »

I have some sympathy for the author of this comment. I have probably spent 25 hours trying to spin up on Ember.js in the last few weeks, concentrating both on Ember.js itself, and how to work with REST back ends written in Node.js and in Clojure (I have a few simple examples of this in public github repos). Yesterday I struggled getting simple auth working.

I am taking it a bit on faith that this work will pay off, even though my usual development "use cases" are fairly simple web apps where I just use a little AJAX (often pjax). I am assuming that if I master Ember.js then I will build more complex stuff.

I like Ember.js and Node.js - a light weight development kit. A few years ago I was doing GWT/SmartGWT for a customer: produces nice interactive web apps but development feels like running through mud.

Re: "Getting started with Ember.Js is easy." - No it isn't

#192

Post by FuzzyDunlop »

I think the OP in that thread wrote a pretty amazing post, in all honesty.

Unlike your typical "it doesn't work" or "this sucks", the frustrated individual still takes care to detail, step by step, exactly what felt wrong or what was missing. In doing so, they demonstrate exactly why it's so frustrating.

There's feedback not only on the quality of the documentation, but the experience of getting an Ember app up and running. While improving the former would make life a bit simpler, the setup seemingly being so involved - requiring you to manually resolve missing dependencies - still diminishes the initial experience.

All of this makes it surprising that someone would totally dismiss it in such an unceremonious manner, and for reasons that are totally at conflict with what doubles up as a support forum. Is that discussion board there as a flagship Discourse site, or for support?

Re: "Getting started with Ember.Js is easy." - No it isn't

#193

Post by robotmay »

kaoD wrote: post #169
robotmay wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah I quite like those two, but I was hoping for some client-side ones as most of my projects are in Ruby :) I should try a project on Node again at some point, it has been quite a while.

It seems to me that this isn't feasible in pure client side because the server would have to agree on some kind of protocol. Server-side is mandatory here. Unfortunately I cannot recommend any since I don't do Ruby :( Maybe you don't need a framework but just a JSON-RPC[1] library. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JSON-RPC

I'm really just looking for a model system that allows simple updates of objects in its identity map with data from an arbitrary source. Backbone is the closest I've found to supporting this with the least effort. I'd rather like to use Server Sent Events, as there's decent support in a variety of languages and it's pretty simple; it's just that no current frameworks seem to have been built with those sorts of technologies in mind.

I've largely resigned myself to having to hack support into anything I try.

Re: "Getting started with Ember.Js is easy." - No it isn't

#194

Post by trek »

jaggederest wrote: post #183
trek wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is why I opted to say "I'm sorry, I cannot respond".

Can't you see that that, in itself, is a response? To not respond would be to not post at all . Edit: After reading the FAQ you linked elsewhere, your response is explicitly tone-based and unhelpful. I believe that violates the polite discourse rule more than anything the original poster said.

As the saying goes: "You can't not communicate."

Not responding is also communication. So I responded.

Privately, to the poster, with a long explanation of the kind of conversation on this topic I'd love to share, and publicly explaining why I wasn't going to chime in after having been asked to.

Most people are assuming my only response to him is the one they can see. They're mistaken.

Re: "Getting started with Ember.Js is easy." - No it isn't

#195

Post by mst »

trek wrote: post #78
joshstrange wrote: post #27

Trek is making a huge mistake IMHO. As a developer I can think of nothing more helpful than to get a "steam-of-consciousness" excerpt from our users. This is something no analytics package can tell you, if you want to make your "product" easy to use then this is the exact feedback you need. Delverworld was outlining the various pitfalls of getting started with ember.js and a core contributor shrugs it off because he…

I have admitted that, publicly, very often, in other topics on discuss.emberjs.com, on websites, on twitter, on videos, and elsewhere. It's no secret I'd like to improve the documentation for Ember.js and I'm already well aware of the places that people are facing difficulty right now. There's work, if people spent a moment reading the top topics in the forum, on a getting started guide with a direct call for feedbac…

The thing is ... if it had been sarcasm in the name of snark, I think I'd agree. But it really didn't sound like that, it sounded like sarcasm as a means to distract your attention from the quiet, soft sound of heartbreak that heralds the shattering of a dream.

That's what, I think, led to such negative responses. You read snark; we read a cry for help from the darkness and imagined a child who'd trusted your site on the verge of tears over a broken promise.

Anguish, anger and assholery can all sound very similar, and I'm sympathetic to your definition of that level of sarcasm as uncivil, but I suspect that the perception gap here is why most of this conversation seems to involve people talking past each other.

Or maybe I'm misinterpreting it completely; conversation's fun like that ...

Re: "Getting started with Ember.Js is easy." - No it isn't

#196

Post by zaius »

I've had a lot of trouble with learning ember while dealing with all the breaking changes as it's moved towards 1.0. The ember core team have said they're updating docs, and trying to get outdated tutorials marked as such, but until that time it's still a bit of a minefield.

So, if you'd like to chat about ember with other people learning, and not just have a channel full of unanswered questions (i.e. #emberjs), come join me on freenode at #emberjs-chat

Re: "Getting started with Ember.Js is easy." - No it isn't

#197

Post by mark_l_watson »

mootothemax wrote: post #35
charlietran wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you find a suitable alternative to Ember?

Did you find a suitable alternative to Ember? I went with Amber in the end. I can't remember if it was more or less painful initially, but at that point I had spite in my fingers. Not sure if there's also a lesson in that for startups: will you get lucky with some users just because they've had a bad experience immediately prior to checking you out?

Please talk a bit more about Amber. Easy to work with back end REST services? Easy to deploy?

Re: "Getting started with Ember.Js is easy." - No it isn't

#199

Post by mark_l_watson »

davidroetzel wrote: post #71

It really is not easy. I really want to like Ember, I really do. But I also gave up after being unable to wrap my head around it. I read the official documentation, which is well written, but does not cover the big picture needed to tie everything together. I watched the peepcode screencast, which is great, even if for me the pace could have been a bit faster. After that I was convinced I wanted to give Ember a shot.…

Am I making a mistake waiting on Ember-Data? I thought it was still in flux. The reason I have spent so much time recently with 1.0rc1 is that I finally expect Ember.js to be stable. I have just been using AJAx to manually fetch data as required.

Re: "Getting started with Ember.Js is easy." - No it isn't

#200

Post by VeejayRampay »

patrickaljord wrote: post #39

Had a similar experience, then tried AngularJS. Couldn't be happier :) http://angularjs.org

I'm getting the feeling that Angular has now become the Haskell of client-side frameworks.

i.e. the one you'll see shamelessly plugged under every single discussion about any other client-side framework as if it is some work of genius, even though lots of users tend to agree that it's just yet another take on the subject that some like better and some don't, with some very lacking and outdated documentation and a much stronger and opinionated take on things that is simply not everyone's cup of tea.

With all due respect to the fantastic project that is Angular, I just wish people would stop flashing it everywhere like it's going to solve world hunger and programmer distress or something...

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