Comment by facorreia | Hacker News Reader

Comment by facorreia | Hacker News Reader

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Since I was used as proof of the effectiveness of "puffery", I went to find out what that English word means: "promotional statements and claims that express subjective rather than objective views, which no 'reasonable person' would take literally".

Well, I don't claim to take all my decisions based on pure reasoning. Intuition has a lot to do with my technology choices, because it's built on all my prior experiences and knowledge. I've learned that often keeping it simple is a good thing. There´s a tendency to over-architect and over-abstract, and the cognitive overload of the full stack, end-to-end, is significant.

For front-end JavaScript applications, I've been favorable to AngularJS and Knockout. I've looked into Backbone but it promotes a style of programming I'm done with and I want to have no relation to ever again, so I wouldn't consider Backbone an alternative either way.

So I don't feel diminished or discouraged by negative remarks to say that I'll try Riot's style in the next small app I'll build. It's targeted at mobile, it already depends on jQuery, and I was worried to add another large (for 3G) dependency to it.

And sadly, with great pain, I rest my case.

---

But hey, if you want to try out a hot new framework that Fits in A Tweet™, I've got something special for you.

Announcing Revolution.js

It's a mere fraction the size of Riot.js, and provides over 100 times the functionality. Despite the unbelievable size, all the building blocks are there: a template engine, router, event library and a strict MVP pattern to keep things organized.

Revolution.js is simpler and faster — in fact, on a completely different scale. In fact, it's so small and so fast that I can share it with you right here:

    function Revolution() {
      var a = arguments;
      return jQuery[a[0]].apply(jQuery, a.slice(1));
    }

New frameworks like Riot.js persuade false beliefs with shiny websites and finely crafted marketing without transparent, scientific analysis. They solve hypothetical problems and cause new problems instead.

At this point you might ask — "Hey, wait a minute, what's the deal? Isn't that just wrapping jQuery, and adding nothing?". To which I would answer, yes, exactly.

This is a Revolution against the status quo! Revolution is a manifesto for vanilla JavaScript and jQuery.

Nice one Jeremy :D

As the author of Backbone I can understand your rage. I think that instead of bashing Riot you should focus on reasoning the existence of Backbone instead. Riot is clearly not just a jQuery and people can realize that.

Riot is just jQuery though. The riot's own source code is literally useless. I agree with the ideas that you can structure your application without frameworks like backbone though

From the repo: "Riot is a manifesto for vanilla JavaScript and jQuery."

I think that's really the point. Rejecting the idea of these big frameworks and promoting vanilla JS.. Rejecting the myth that without big frameworks your code is unmanageable.

Issue #1:

Arguments object has no method `slice`.

Steps to repro:

Invoke the constructor.

I'll send a PR as soon as this makes it to Github.

--------

In all seriousness though, I completely agree with you.

The revolution will be open sourced. https://github.com/ChrisAntaki/revolution

Genius!

I seriously thought you could do better than this. I was expecting trolly responses from other framework communities but not from Backbone. I prefer reasoning and proper conversation instead of this hate speech that the framework communities are all over. I was hoping you were closer to a scientist.

So far no reasonable arguments why Backbone is better. Is it just larger, slower and less effective? I was expecting you to argue against those points that are now clearly visible to everyone.

This looks like hate speech:

> Current frameworks persuade false beliefs with shiny websites and finely crafted marketing without transparent, scientific analysis. They solve hypothetical problems and cause new problems instead. Unfortunately, large communities are dealing with irrelevant issues.

You're telling jashkenas (indirectly) that he "persuade false beliefs", "without scientific analysis", that he's solving "hypothetical problems" and "dealing with irrelevant issues" and plenty of other things like that... and what response do you expect from him?

> I was hoping you were closer to a scientist.

You already told him he's not a scientist, see above.

P.S.: I don't follow any "religion". I use framework or plain JavaScript depending on the project, and I find it sad when anyone promotes their solution as the only good one.

It's not hate speech.

The blog entry states that you can implement the Todo MVC app with 1kb of extra code on top of jQuery and the end result is smaller, modular and faster. This is big news.

The statements on the post are indeed bold but I think they are still valid. They should deserve a better response IMHO. This seriously questions the relevance of current client-side frameworks.

Without constructive criticism should we just agree that others are bigger, slower and less productive ??

- 1kb + jQuery is bigger (or almost the same size) as the other ones without jQuery (except Ember.js).

- Comparing template engines only (with the riot solution having less features) doesn't give a complete picture for comparing speed. There are dozen of other parts to make a web app. The template is only a small part. Benchmarks aren't even a good way to compare speed. It's how the user feels when using the resulting app and interacting with the UI that matters.

- TodoMVC is a very small app for comparing productivity. E.g. your router implementation doesn't take into account IE bugs, and researching such bugs instead of using a proven solution can be less productive.

I agree with you that modular and maintainable web apps can be developed with jQuery only, and even plain JavaScript only. I dislike, as much as you do, "Backbone developers", "AngularJS developers", "Ember.js developers", etc. who can use only one framework, can't properly structure an app without using a framework, and claim that the framework they use is the only good one to solve any problems and build any type of app.

A good developer should be able to choose the proper solution for a particular problem. There's no one size fits all solution for every problem.

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