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Comment by inglor | Hacker News Reader

I hate posts that don't show code.

Show me the code, don't hide behind a huge post with buzzwords like "mobile first" and "modular". Show me what it actually does.

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> I hate posts that don't show code.

The quickstart (called "Learn") is 2 clicks away, well written, and full of code samples:

http://ampersandjs.com/learn

I hate it when people are lazy. ;-)

But seriously, I agree that the code is what matters, not some blog post. However, I don't know if you could really unpack a framework in a single blog post anyways...

I agree with @inglor, the post could do a bit more to reel you in. From skimming over the content I could only understand that it is not backbone, modulesmodulesmodules. I found the page has issues conveying their surely valid and useful point, but they are using all the lazy folks, which are also potentially the lazy people that want to build apps using a framework.

Two clicks? I don't even have time for one click! The thing is, in the front-end world, people really can't afford to spider the website of every new framework that comes out. I don't call that "lazy"; I call it having a limited amount of time to allocate to researching cutting edge stuff.

A few inline fragments to contrast with Backbone would be super helpful.

Sorry, we just wanted to give the background to the project and why in the post, rather than focussing too heavily on code. There's plenty of API docs for the core components in http://ampersandjs.com

And the clientside code for the example application generated by the cli is here: https://github.com/AmpersandJS/ampersand/tree/master/templat...

> Sorry, we just wanted to give the background to the project and why in the post, rather than focussing too heavily on code.

Your landing page should contain what your users want to see, not what you want to put there. You might be excited about the motivation behind your project but nobody cares, really.

I clicked on the link and I spent ten minutes reading a wall of text hoping to find good reasons why I should switch from Angular, Backbone or Ember. Instead, I just closed the window without knowing anything about your framework.

> There's plenty of API docs for the core components

Still not a substitute for a user manual, even tiny.

> You might be excited about the motivation behind your project but nobody cares, really.

Yes we'll try and improve the content on the homepage to make it more focussed. Though I guarantee if we didn't talk about the motivation we'd have people saying "why did you make another framework?!"

> Still not a substitute for a user manual, even tiny.

I'm not suggesting we've got it perfect by any stretch, but I'm not sure exactly what you're hoping to see? There's also http://ampersandjs.com/learn with some more detail around the various pieces.

A little harsh, don't you think? The link is to a blog post - not a landing page - and it seems to me it can contain whatever the author wanted it to. The post wasn't submitted here by anyone from &yet, but by Jeremy Ashkenas (the creator of Backbone which is partly the basis for ampersand).

The actual landing page is http://ampersandjs.com (linked in the first sentence of the blog post) and has plenty of technical content like the user manual/guides you wanted (http://ampersandjs.com/learn) and api docs (http://ampersandjs.com/docs).

Yes, you're right, I apologize for being a bit harsh.

But the landing page doesn't say much as well. The first section is "Why?," and the only "what" is "Ampersand.js is a well-defined approach to combining (get it?) a series of intentionally tiny modules."

I don't know what that means, and the reasons for it are "simplicity of tiny modules and npm dependency," which are not exactly convincing by itself, as I can do that just fine with plain Browserify. Then, going to the "Learn" page I get my hands busy.. with something I know nothing about.

This is heavily marketed towards Backbone users, I'm guessing.

Yea that's fair enough. This is an initial release so I'm sure they are reading these comments and working to improve their site/docs/etc.

You're right that it's basically for Backbone users:

> We <3 Backbone.js at &yet. It’s brilliantly simple and solves many common problems in developing clientside applications.

> But we missed the focused simplicity of tiny modules in node-land.

Read as: "This is like Backbone.js (almost a forked Backbone.js) but better." (better from some perspective, at least)

>Your landing page should contain what your users want to see, not what you want to put there.

Were does the entitlement come from?

I hate to say it, but there is a nugget of truth to this; the post is a giant wall of text when there should really be a summary of what the project is first, with the 'why' second.

It took some browsing of the GitHub repos for me to figure out what this is. But I like it, and will probably use it, so the code is not the issue, just the presentation. :)

Did you see ampersandjs.com? Perhaps we don't link to that clearly enough.

Though yes, a better overview would be useful.

You don't link to it clearly enough. I also had a "just show me the code" reaction, and all I saw was the example of how to create a restful collections module.

Yes, I see the site now - I'm an old hat Backbone dev so this is actually pretty succinct & great. Again, thanks for this project.

I think it's good that people explain why they created something. If you don't know WHY they created it, WHY would you use it? And when you know the 'why', the 'what' becomes much more clear.

I think the problem is the article lacks a clear hook. I had to go to the site to find out why I should care. In the post itself, the list at the end is the most engaging part - but you've probably lost a lot of readers before you get there.

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