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What is Meteor.js?

joshowens.me

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Re: What is Meteor.js?

#21

Post by kaoD »

MrBuddyCasino wrote: post #15
rezistik wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like to use NodeJS too, JavaScript is a great misunderstood language that will handle the vast majority of use cases in the world of CRUD. Honestly, there is something to be said for hacking something together quickly. Prototyping is a great way to explore ideas and find the interesting problems nested in the problem you're trying to solve. I just don't like the evangelism of Meteor because I've never seen anything…

Sure it will handle CRUD just fine, like PHP did for all those years, but thats a low standard to measure yourself against. ECMAScript 6 does look kinda decent, but thats the future, not the present. Also, why use it (Node.js) on the server? Its not even that fast, 21th on the techempower Json benchmark, which should be its strongest discipline (all I/O, no computation, emitting Json).

> Also, why use it (Node.js) on the server? Its not even that fast

Not only it's still reasonably fast (21st is great, it's mostly surpassed only by C and Java), but it also has a much better ecosystem than most platforms (especially C and Java), it's faster to develop in (especially C and Java) and shares language with client side.

Sharing a common codebase is very important for me. I found in most of my web projects I'm reusing code between server and client. Ever worked with code that does (or should do) the same thing in different codebases? It's just a nightmare.

Having the same React code be rendered in the server (fast, SEO-friendly) and in the client (offloads resources off the server) is just too good.

NodeJS looks like a decent compromise to me, isn't it?

Re: What is Meteor.js?

#22

Post by towelguy »

rezistik wrote: post #3

A couple of things really bother me about Meteor.js. One, the Atomosphere package manager site is insanely slow and buggy. Everything feels like it takes forever to render or rerender. Opening the side menu is a jaggy experience. If performance is that terrible on a super simple list of packages how terrible is it on an actually reactive site? Two, I've never seen an article on meteor that wasn't also an advertisemen…

Recently someone posted a fast alternative to Atmosphere to the user mailing list: http://fastosphere.meteor.com/ I think it uses Atmosphere's DDP connection so it should be up to date.

Re: What is Meteor.js?

#23

Post by sarciszewski »

justinsb wrote: post #20
sarciszewski wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're still piping untrusted code to sh. Please implement asymmetric cryptographic signature verification (i.e. PGP).

I'm not sure what PGP would buy us over everything going over https from sites under Meteor's control? Cryptographic verification is great when you want to deliver the bulk of the content over http, or via untrusted mirrors, but we're not doing that. However, if you want greater assurance, Meteor is open source, and easy to run from a git checkout. That seems to solve even more problems than PGP would, though then yo…

> I'm not sure what PGP would buy us over everything going over https from sites under Meteor's control?

Rogue CA certificates, targeted MITM -> RCE attacks (Nation State Adversaries, etc.)

By using PGP (or, hell, openssl) to sign the package with a key that remains offline/air-gapped and then writing installer instructions that verify the signature before running anything, you reduce the odds of this happening significantly.

Additionally, it allows you to mirror the contents on CDNs with some peace of mind.

Re: What is Meteor.js?

#24

Post by FooBarWidget »

justinsb wrote: post #20
sarciszewski wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're still piping untrusted code to sh. Please implement asymmetric cryptographic signature verification (i.e. PGP).

I'm not sure what PGP would buy us over everything going over https from sites under Meteor's control? Cryptographic verification is great when you want to deliver the bulk of the content over http, or via untrusted mirrors, but we're not doing that. However, if you want greater assurance, Meteor is open source, and easy to run from a git checkout. That seems to solve even more problems than PGP would, though then yo…

It buys you almost nothing. The only thing it buys you is avoidance of knee-jerk reactions from certain people, who most likely never were interested in Meteor in the first place.

Re: What is Meteor.js?

#25

Post by sarciszewski »

FooBarWidget wrote: post #24
justinsb wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what PGP would buy us over everything going over https from sites under Meteor's control? Cryptographic verification is great when you want to deliver the bulk of the content over http, or via untrusted mirrors, but we're not doing that. However, if you want greater assurance, Meteor is open source, and easy to run from a git checkout. That seems to solve even more problems than PGP would, though then yo…

It buys you almost nothing. The only thing it buys you is avoidance of knee-jerk reactions from certain people, who most likely never were interested in Meteor in the first place.

Instead of taking the troll bait here, I'll just link to this excellent blog post by Anthony Ferrara that sums up my position well.

http://blog.ircmaxell.com/2014/10/fud-and-flames-and-trolls-...

> Those That Have Passion

Re: What is Meteor.js?

#27

Post by MrBuddyCasino »

kaoD wrote: post #21
MrBuddyCasino wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure it will handle CRUD just fine, like PHP did for all those years, but thats a low standard to measure yourself against. ECMAScript 6 does look kinda decent, but thats the future, not the present. Also, why use it (Node.js) on the server? Its not even that fast, 21th on the techempower Json benchmark, which should be its strongest discipline (all I/O, no computation, emitting Json).

> Also, why use it (Node.js) on the server? Its not even that fast Not only it's still reasonably fast (21st is great, it's mostly surpassed only by C and Java), but it also has a much better ecosystem than most platforms (especially C and Java), it's faster to develop in (especially C and Java) and shares language with client side. Sharing a common codebase is very important for me. I found in most of my web project…

I agree it is reasonably fast. I don't agree its ecosystem is better than Javas, neither in size nor in quality.

Same language is an advantage, so is development speed, I agree.

But: C++, Java, Lua, Ur, Go, Ruby and Erlang are all faster than JS, and especially Ruby is a much nicer language. I don't hate Node.js, it has its sweet spots and the tooling feels nice and lightweight, but its not (yet) a very good general purpose tool. Its just not yet on the sane part of the hype curve, and I don't want to be the guy who has to maintain that callback hell 5 years from now.

But ECMAScript 6 is definitely moving into the right direction.

Re: What is Meteor.js?

#29

Post by towelguy »

sarciszewski wrote: post #9

"What is Meteor.js?" Yet another framework that encourages developers to pipe into their shell. Until this changes, I will never give it a second look. http://curlpipesh.tumblr.com/

It is unfortunate people think piping into a shell is cool. But don't let that keep you away from the actual framework, which is actually pretty cool by itself without gimmicks like that.

Re: What is Meteor.js?

#30

Post by matthewmacleod »

Please bear in mind while reading that this is the same author as the rather controversial 'Why Meteor will kill Ruby on Rails' from last year (HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6642893)

I'll repeat my thoughts from back then – Meteor is a great experiment that tries out some interesting ideas for what web apps might look like in the future.

I maintain that it's absolutely not production-ready, or even very good. I don't want to store data in Mongo. I don't want Cordova baked-in (wtf is that about anyway?). But we absolutely need people playing with this sort of technology. I just wish the hype would die down a bit…

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