
Ask HN: Why did famous.js fail? - Kinnard
Why didn&#x27;t famous.js succeed take off?
cf:http:&#x2F;&#x2F;deprecated.famous.org&#x2F;<p>This seems vastly superior (more logical, determnistic, and appropriate for modern web development than html+css) to a lot of the other options out there.
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jheriko
It's a bit of a baseless gimmick when it comes to 3D... gives you nothing much
over a good understanding of CSS and geometry... which is probably good, but
what did it give us for 2D?

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cocktailpeanuts
My personal opinion: They failed because they launched big and didn't let
people use it. I remember first signing up for beta, waiting, waiting, and
waiting, and never getting an invite. I even tweeted at them but never got a
response. They seemed to be only focused on creating buzz in silicon valley
without actually letting people use their platform, maybe they thought that
was marketing. But what good is marketing when no one can use the product?
Later on they eventually opened up but it was too late. No developer likes to
build on a platform that's going down.

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flukus
It seems as though it's entirely code driven. We've largely decided that
declarative langues (html, xaml) are better for building user interfaces. This
looks more like swing for the web.

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carterehsmith
>> We've largely decided that declarative langues (html, xaml) are better for
building user interfaces.

On the other hand, many of us decided the exact opposite.

Check the history ?. Declarative UIs has been around for, what 30-40 years,
and they don't seem to be actually gaining any share.

They invariably look super-useful and productive when you build "my first
app". Typically it is a "ToDo list".

Then you start using it to build something larger and then you swear a lot,
and eventually realize that the whole premise is flawed, and then you decide
never to use declarative UIs again, ever. lol.

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flukus
"Check the history ?. Declarative UIs has been around for, what 30-40 years,
and they don't seem to be actually gaining any share."

Really? Because HTML seems to be by far the most popular environment these
days. many are even trying to push it to the desktop.

"Then you start using it to build something larger and then you swear a lot,
and eventually realize that the whole premise is flawed, and then you decide
never to use declarative UIs again, ever. lol."

What other abstractions are you using? If it was manipulating things based in
jQuery selectors then I'd agree. But I find a combination with an MVVM
framework (like knockout) it scales incredibly well.

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Kinnard
I actually hate html+css and other developers I know hate it too. I feel like
it's wasting many developer hours. I think one of the reasons its so "popular"
is that there's no alternative that is widely supported by browsers. I think
it's unlikely that mass end-user adoption can be driven by a substantially
better developer experience.

However there may be opportunities elsewhere . . .

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flukus
Sure it's a pain at times. But is there any other tech that makes it so easy
to build apps/sites that work on anything from from a widescreen desktop to a
smart phone?

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Kinnard
There isn't one yet and that's the problem.

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flukus
When/if there is one I'd expect it to share many of the traits that made
html+css so successful.

In reality I'm expecting html+css to keep evolving and removing most of the
pain points. Grids for example:

[https://www.w3.org/TR/css3-grid-layout/](https://www.w3.org/TR/css3-grid-
layout/)

~~~
Kinnard
I think css+html has evolved and improved a lot. That's a good example.

But I think ultimately everything is being done to extend a legacy technology
that was meant to add hyperlinking to texts and nothing more. I think a first-
principles re-approach will be so much more powerful and free of the gravity
of html+css constraints allowing developers to reach escape velocity.

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flukus
XAML started off from a blank slate and got inferior (IMO) results. There are
a lot of not so obvious upsides to html+css that often get thrown out.

Starting from scratch could be better in theory, but I'm doubtful that it will
happen in practice anytime soon.

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kristianp
I agree starting from scratch is unlikely to happen. XAML however, wasn't
helped by being built in the era when XML was perceived as the solution to
every problem.

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Hamcha
Didn't they also change scope entirely? When I signed in (and never got
invited) it was more like a visualization library or something to do cool 3d
stuff.. and then moved to UIs and mobile apps and whatnot when it came out.

Funny enough, the same exact thing happened with Outracks' "fuse", started as
a tool (called Realtime Studio) for realtime GPU-driven, optionally
interactive content like music visualization (had a slick demo for that) and
demo-production (Outracks is also a demogroup) and then switched to a mobile
UI tool all of the sudden. (at which point I started completely ignoring
because it's completely not what I wanted)

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schneidmaster
I tried to get into it a couple of times and I could never understand it. I
don't think I'm particularly slow at picking up new stuff in general, for me
the learning curve was just massive and I wasn't ever quite sure why it was
worth the investment. Maybe if I was trying to do browser game dev or
something but I've never needed a magic periodic table[1] in my everyday
development life.

[1]:
[http://disrupt.famo.us/periodic402/](http://disrupt.famo.us/periodic402/)

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jasoncchild
they were solving a problem that people were not having in large enough
numbers (yet).

yes, the DOM sucks and is slow no, neat 3d client effects are not what most
people need _now_

