What is Meteor.js?
joshowens.me
joshowens.me
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 advertisement. They all list how easy it is to start a project or add a package as the main draw. That and constant connectivity/"reactive" application structure.
It just feels too orchestrated.
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'.
He should be given how good Iron Router is, but that's another issue :)
Don't confuse your circle of vision on twitter/hackernews/etc as a limited view of what is actually going on in the Meteor community.
Have you ever looked at a Devshop talk?
As for Atmosphere, I would love to pitch in and help but they haven't bothered to open source it yet (and sounds like they won't).
Try http://fastosphere.meteor.com/, judge speed based on that :)
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.
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.
https://gist.github.com/themeteorchef/aa48a086824d9736033d
I added some inline comments to explain how everything is tied together, but if you have questions shoot me an email/gchat! ryan.glover@themeteorchef.com.
If you're looking to build a quick CRUD app, Meteor would be a great candidate.
Edit: In this example, the interaction would be when I type a taco name into the field provided and click "submit," it would immediately appear in my tacos list :)
I'm open to giving it a look, but honestly I really love ES6, React and Express. I can't think of much reason to leave them anytime soon.
I've been known to be tempted. And if it really increases productivity the way the marketing claims than I can see it's use case at the company I work for as well.
My fear is kind of two fold.
One I really like the NodeJS micro-modules/micro services architecture. I like being able to consider each entity of an application it's own application. It's really easy to scale, it's really easy to completely replace portions of the application when I want to update them.
Second, I don't like 'automagic', I found both Rails and Ember really awful for me personally. I had to constantly check the documentation to understand what is expected of each layer, and there are always so many layers.
Last question if you'll continue to indulge me. I prefer functional programming to OO, since Meteor is reactive is it safe to assume it is also geared towards a functional paradigm?
You can bring your own way of thinking and work it into Meteor. The platform has conventions, for sure (e.g. client code vs. server code), but none that force you into a rigid way of writing your code.
Is that what you're asking (I'm not much of a programmers programmer so my terminology is spotty)?
Edit: give it a try, but if you have a preference for writing your apps: work with that. The marketing bullshit is just that: marketing. Meteor is great, but it's not for everyone or every application. Instead of getting caught up in the woo, it's helpful to play with it for an afternoon to see if it maps to your mental model of what an application should (or could) look like. If not, stick with what ya like :)
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…
Discover Meteor, the most popular book about Meteor, even uses Middleman for their blog and website - because using Meteor for something like a blog or information based site just makes no sense at all.
The entire internet is information :P but I know what you're trying to say
It IS good though, the ability to out put really good applications quickly, with simple code shouldn't be overlooked.
At my company, we have critical API services with SLA's that will cost us $$$ if broken. We develop on the JVM with Scala, the number of currently open bugs can be counted on one hand, with millions of daily users. But some of the dashboards for monitoring the service are Node.js. Want a new fancy gauge on that board that measures X by interacting with API Y? There's probably a NPM module for that, so give me 30 minutes, OK? I see that the web frontend serving is increasingly being done in Node as well, because it's a good fit for that environment.
Don't get married to your platform! Try many things, and figure out where on the spectrum the tools fit and use them where appropriate. I've done many years of C++ server and embedded development, but working with Meteor just gives me the biggest dumb grin. It's fun!
Node is the fastest growing ecosystem today, and it's not because everyone using it are idiots. Meteor takes that energy and kicks the out-of-box productivity up to 11. Java/Scala/Go/C++ are and will continue to be the workhorses of the Internet when performance and stability are of the utmost importance. So, no matter where on the platform spectrum you're currently on, go check out what's happening at the other end!
Like every web framework, I've run into problems. The simplicity of the server-client reactivity is keeping me in. Its a good idea and the got the funding to keep it going.
But they'll never explain what it is, or how it's solving hard problems for them.
But hey look how easy it is to add social auth!
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 really explaining it's value.
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).
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?
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.
Wrong column. You're looking at languages, but a language does not affect performance: its platform does. E.g., the only Ruby benchmark which is faster than Node is actually JRuby, i.e. Java.
> and especially Ruby is a much nicer language
That's a matter of preference. I don't like Ruby myself (nor most languages encouraging classes as their primary constructs).
You shouldn't evaluate languages, but platforms.
> but its not (yet) a very good general purpose tool
Why? I mean, no tool is a very good general purpose tool, but what makes NodeJS worse as a tool than, say, Ruby?
> I don't want to be the guy who has to maintain that callback hell 5 years from now.
Neither do I. That's why I don't use JavaScript for anything else than a target language. You seem to like ES6, why don't you use it and transpile it to plain JS?
Platforms, not languages.
Both language and platform affect performance, otherwise JRuby would be the same speed as native Java, which is not the case.
> E.g., the only Ruby benchmark which is faster than Node is actually JRuby, i.e. Java.
Which still means that Ruby (as a language, using the JRuby implementation) can be faster than Node (assuming the benchmark at issue is meaningful at all.)
> That's a matter of preference. Anyways, you shouldn't evaluate languages, but platforms.
Since you actually need to choose languages to use, you absolutely should evaluate them. You should, of course, also evaluate platforms since you need to choose those, too (and part of evaluating languages is evaluating the constraints language choices put on platform choices, and vice versa.)
No. JRuby is the platform, that's why JRuby is not the same speed as native Java.
But CoffeeScript has the same speed as plain JavaScript, because both are running over the same platform (NodeJS) even if they're different languages.
It just happens JRuby can only run a single language (Ruby).
> Which still means that Ruby (as a language, using the JRuby implementation) can be faster than Node (assuming the benchmark at issue is meaningful at all.)
Ruby is neither fast nor slow. Languages don't have speed.
> Since you actually need to choose languages to use, you absolutely should evaluate them.
Of course, but you shouldn't evaluate languages on their speed, because then you're measuring something completely unrelated to the language. You can measure platform speed (and the constraints they put on languages you can choose), not the other way around.
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So, to sum it up, software engineering is all about compromises. Dismissing NodeJS because it ranks 21st in a benchmark is a bit shortsighted.
Of course Java and C are going to beat JS at speed, but... do you want to deal with Java's interfacing mess? Do you want to deal with C's manual memory management? I certainly don't. Especially for a web app.
Performancewise, for the record, I find JavaScript to be wholly adequate for writing servers, but to say that the platform is what makes it slow(er) doesn't ring true to me. For example, JavaScript has a few poor design decisions that make implementing performant arrays really hard. Some other interpreted languages get this right, and their performance can be (and usually is) much better in that regard. However, this is kind of splitting hairs since you only care about its performance on whatever environment on which you are running it.
[1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Type...
Size is a fact:
And Ruby is definitely not faster than JavaScript.
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.
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.
The fact that we are comparing static typed compiled languages like C and Java to NodeJS in order to find higher performance alternatives says a lot about it.
NodeJS isn't a replacement for those lower level languages, however when compared to other dynamic languages like PHP, Ruby, or Python it's suddenly far more competitive.
PHP is probably the main target in my opinion for Node. It's an incredibly popular language for nearly any web application use case.
http://blog.loadimpact.com/2013/02/01/node-js-vs-php-using-l...
The performance tends to favor Node over PHP. In fact, it favors NodeJS over a ton of languages in a lot of areas.
https://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/
These benchmarks really only place Java, Go and Lua above NodeJS in terms of performance.
Bundle in the ecosystem and developer productivity and it does earn the praise it received.
At the end of the day, the vast majority of developers will never need to optimize their applications past what NodeJS offers. Few of us will really deal with massive scaling issues on a day to day basis, nearly any modern language will handle the majority of applications. By the time performance is an issue it's probably time for a major refactor or rewrite building on the knowledge gained in the original version.
* Web server that runs on Node.js
* MongoDB integration
* Custom build tools
* Package manager (supports installing JS packages for either client-side code, server-side code, or both).
* SignalR-style remote function execution (call functions on the server from the client, and vice versa)
* JS client-side database caching
* Data binding in Javascript templates using Handlebars (or something similar, I don't remember exactly).
etc.
As a long-time user of Meteor in production I have to say this is just about the exact opposite of how I think of Meteor. I'd encourage anyone interested to try out the simple tutorial [1] and glance over the principles behind meteor [2].
For my take on it, Meteor is great for "real-time" apps where user actions should be disseminated across a broad network quickly. It has helpful things like built-in latency compensation which make the end-user experience much nicer and the "database-on-the-client" is just glorious.
The most beautiful part of Meteor is that these features are provided for developers without us needing to make sacrifices or in most cases even change our way of coding. Latency compensation is purely controlled by whether a method is made available on both the client and server or just on the server. The client-side DB is automatically kept in sync with the actual back-end DB via a familiar pub/sub mechanism.
To me, these features (and the many others not mentioned) make Meteor much different than simply a "Ruby on Rails for Node.js".
[1] https://www.meteor.com/install [2] http://docs.meteor.com/#/basic/sevenprinciples
I am still trying to figure out how to explain Meteor to someone brand new to web dev and would love for something more constructive from you here :)
I see a lot of people playing around with it and building tech demo's but very few examples of it being used for anything more than that.
Either way, Atmosphere [1] has thousands of packages to choose from, just use the search function. Good alternative is Fastosphere. [2] Many people have said that if you write a lot of code with Meteor, you're doing something wrong.
0. https://github.com/Differential
2. http://fastosphere.meteor.com/
I'm very new to this myself, and I know that it gets tougher (duh, it's JavaScript!) after a while, but I feel right about giving it some praise!
The framework is brilliant from a productivity and sheer enjoyment perspective. I don't know if it will scale; you don't either. My estimation, though, is that the team building it is very clever and super-aware of what they need to do to make the framework succeed from a scaling perspective.
A lot of the comments here are spitballs from the back row of the classroom. They are willfully uninformed and unfair. It is hard to imagine these commenters are paying much attention during the learning portion of class.
So go forth, meteor team. You're fighting a great fight here. Ignore the naysayers and do the great work you know you can do. Your best way forward is to prove the haters wrong. Maybe a few will even become lovers, though I wouldn't count on it. If you build it, they may come. [update to spell 'perspective' correctly. Ugh]
Also, people are scaling it, we just aren't hearing about it much. I am working to correct that, these trials of scaling need to be more public right now.
I sense that you don't really want an answer to this, you have already made up your mind...
Why is the sticky session requirement a huge devops concern?
From what I understand Mongo sharding shouldn't be hard to implement, but I haven't tried it myself. I spoke to Abigail Watson about it, and she said her first tests with it were promising.
RAM is always a precious resource, so I understand being concerned about it. Are you seeing some absurd usage per client? I am seeing about 350mb processes to handle around 75 connected clients.
Is there a framework or platform that gets the 'last write wins' correct? I seriously doubt that because I doubt you can apply a blanket set of rules for offline support.
I don't think scaling is off-putting, you just need a mongo cluster and then you can add oplog enabled Meteor processes to your pool. I don't see how this is any different than something like Java or Ruby...
The idea of adding Cordova may seem simple or small, but MDG putting it in led me to building my very first mobile app. Prior to trying Cordova and Meteor integration, I usually advised clients it would be easier to just build a responsive design instead of trying to build a native app.
I am sure if you looked at the commits around adding Cordova, it was a little more then just glueing together some CLI tools.
That being said, if Ionic floats your boat, go enjoy it :)
I have helped publish a ton of polished Meteor apps.
It's worth trying before you dive too deep in.
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 you should worry about whether you should compile nodejs yourself, and eventually you start eyeing your CPU suspiciously... :-)
(BTW, I think this is why just linking to a HN thread is tricky... it's difficult to know which of the many viewpoints on any thread you share!)
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.
http://blog.ircmaxell.com/2014/10/fud-and-flames-and-trolls-...
> Those That Have Passion
https://github.com/wayneeseguin/rvm/issues/3105#issuecomment...
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.
2 years ago it was all alpha / betas.
This would be a huge selling feature for me to jump on meteor.js again. Would love to have SQL in meteor.js but again the mysterious "DDP" and it's reliability and ability to scale still remains doubtful.