Ask HN: Why isn't Polymer more popular? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Why isn't Polymer more popular?

3 pointsCapira9 comments

When you search https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11405239 (Who is hiring? April 2016) for frontend framework names you get:

react: 119 hits

angular: 60 hits

polymer: 2 hits

That surprises me bc I'd expected Polymer to become way more popular since the release of 1.0 in May 2015. I assumed web components (+polyfills) are production ready and the bright future of frontend development. In the last year we used Polymer in two larger projects and it was pretty pleasant compared to the previous experiences with Angular 1.4.

What is your explanation? Why isn't Polymer used in more real world projects? What future do you predict for Polymer?

Some people say you can't handle the complexity of larger apps with something that describes itself as a "library" and not a "framwork". Though from my experience it is even easier to handle a large Polymer project than an Angular project.

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I jumped into Web Development by the time Polymer was hitting v1.0, and it was a clear choice to me to go in this direction compared to go for Angular/React and Co. What was really important to me was the flexibility you can have using it. You also have a bunch of tooling that can help you, a very dedicated community for both helping newcomers, discussing Polymer and its component features, building and enlarging the number of available web components, etc...

Totally agree. That's why I am wondering...

The front-end view layer wars are over. React won, and it's the standard now. If something is going to supplant it, it's going to have to be not just marginally better, but 10X better for every use case.

Also note that the React world is bigger than just the browser (React native has been out for a year now.) Contrast that with the fact that Polymer is only a browser technology, and an unpopular one at that (I've only heard of it once and will probably never hear of or think about it again.)

What makes you so certain? How can React be superior to Web Component APIs that are baked into the platform?

Allow me to answer broadly by way of analogy (why VHS was better than Betamax): http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2003/jan/25/comment.co...

What an answer. brilliantly summed up. Although - not happy with the past year's situation, react is the VHS right now. I would stay hopeful of the future CDs to come out though. :-)

More HN comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10979352

We use polymer for an enterprise application. It is awesome so far ...so we don't have a reason to look at React or Angular

>> What future do you predict for Polymer? That's the most important part i guess.

1) A much better performance at browser level 2) and exclusive access to features which others will have to build in an easier manner

  is what can win it for the Polymer side i guess.

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