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What is Meteor.js?

joshowens.me

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Re: What is Meteor.js?

#61

Post by rezistik »

m52go wrote: post #13
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…

Is it possible the site is just a little over-designed? I'm not sure it's fair to judge an entire full-stack framework over the front-end of a single site. I've visited Atmosphere from time to time and while performance wasn't as optimal as it could be with a less sophisticated design, it was never what I would call 'jaggy'.

Usually I would agree, but this is a website built by the team behind the framework. When you're making a tool for people to use you really need to put your best foot forward.

Re: What is Meteor.js?

#63

Post by rezistik »

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).

A lot of work really can be boiled down to CRUD though.

For more advanced stuff, it's great for prototyping ideas, in fact I think that's where it really excels. It's a super simple language with a massive ecosystem, you can very easily play with ideas or start the basis of an application. Then once you've solved the business logic problems it's generally simple to move to a higher performance language.

Re: What is Meteor.js?

#64

Post by rezistik »

rglover wrote: post #60
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…

@rezistik: I've been working on a site called The Meteor Chef for the past couple of months and think some of the stuff I've covered will give you a solid idea of Meteor's power. The focus is on implementations of features for Meteor apps in the form of "recipes," so it's much less about _why_ Meteor is cool and more of a demonstration. http://themeteorchef.com/

@rglover, I'm actually about to do a side project for a family friend. I'd really like it to be something I could do quickly. Basic crud dealing with a lot of inputs, but I want to use Postgres.

What's meteor got for me?

I am honestly interested, as much as the marketing edge of Meteor annoys me I'd like to believe there is some truth to some of the hype.

Re: What is Meteor.js?

#65

Post by upside »

There's a problem I have with frameworks in general. They tend to streamline your thinking too, which is fine if you don't care about making something original or can't see how developing with new approaches can impact the outcome of your product.

Re: What is Meteor.js?

#66

Post by myrryr »

rezistik wrote: post #64
rglover wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

@rezistik: I've been working on a site called The Meteor Chef for the past couple of months and think some of the stuff I've covered will give you a solid idea of Meteor's power. The focus is on implementations of features for Meteor apps in the form of "recipes," so it's much less about _why_ Meteor is cool and more of a demonstration. http://themeteorchef.com/

@rglover, I'm actually about to do a side project for a family friend. I'd really like it to be something I could do quickly. Basic crud dealing with a lot of inputs, but I want to use Postgres. What's meteor got for me? I am honestly interested, as much as the marketing edge of Meteor annoys me I'd like to believe there is some truth to some of the hype.

What does meteor have for you? Well, not so much right now. Crud applications talking to SQL isn't its focus point.

You want to build apps quickly that automatically sync up between uses (think google docs) and like using mongo? Then there is a LOT of goodness to be had with meteor.

I've written a lot of meteor apps. It is really really good, but not for everything.

Re: What is Meteor.js?

#68

Post by myrryr »

matthewmacleod wrote: post #30

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…

It is production ready. We use it a lot. Mongo? Well, yes, you are stuck with Mongo - there isn't good database support outside of that, and as for Cordova? I have no idea why they baked that in either :)

It IS good though, the ability to out put really good applications quickly, with simple code shouldn't be overlooked.

Re: What is Meteor.js?

#69

Post by MrBuddyCasino »

rezistik wrote: post #63
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).

A lot of work really can be boiled down to CRUD though. For more advanced stuff, it's great for prototyping ideas, in fact I think that's where it really excels. It's a super simple language with a massive ecosystem, you can very easily play with ideas or start the basis of an application. Then once you've solved the business logic problems it's generally simple to move to a higher performance language.

I fully agree. Performance is not even that important, but for much of the Node.js/MongoDB hype cycle, thats what people often claimed was its biggest advantage; that "average" developers could now write servers that scale beyond what was thought to be practical.

But if that isn't true, then JS has to be measured against other languages on different merits, and e.g. Ruby and Lua are just as suitable for quick prototyping.

Anyway, these discussions usually end in language zealots downvoting each other and not much else, even on HN. Facebook still runs on PHP, so theres that.

Re: What is Meteor.js?

#70

Post by myrryr »

joe_momma wrote: post #59

Why do they keep announcing Meteor.js as if it's something new. It came out 2 years ago. Oh I know why, because it has major funding and they have some marketing blitz going on right now beating into people's mind that Meteor is great/grand.

Nope, it is because they have announced the 1.0 release. You can build stuff in it without having the platform change from under you now.

2 years ago it was all alpha / betas.

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