

Getting started with Meteor.js - stared
http://joshowens.me/getting-started-with-meteor-js/

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evo_9
Meteor is by far my favorite new platform for side projects. I love how easy
it is to get something up and running, the integrated build system and the
simplicity of deploying your projects to a meteor host.

I wish there was an easy way to use a different database although I get it,
it's part of what makes Meteor so easy get something up and running quickly.

My gut is that if Meteor weren't solely tied to MongoDB and instead had an
easy way to switch to Firebase, Parse, etc this platform would really take
off.

~~~
tlianza
One thing I was surprised to run into is how basic CRUD operations don't have
an out-of-the-box solution, like they did even with Rails many years ago.

When I read the "Discover Meteor" guide and they got to the part about
handling submit buttons by writing jQuery handlers with e.preventDefault and
all that, I was really surprised. Similarly I didn't see obvious, baked-in
solutions to validation, or sharing templates between "edit" and "create"
situations.

Then, there's the built-in Meteor accounts stuff, which does not make it easy
to create an admin page for users, which again I expected to be a
straightfoward task. And, not only that, but once you do start to build that
you read more-and-more about how allowing the client to make certain
modifications is insecure, and so you should start pushing things back to
Meteor methods...

Anyway, a lot of this stuff has given me pause. I love the runtime speed, but
the speed of getting something up and running (in terms of dev time) seems
considerably slower than the equivalent in Rails, particularly around basic
CRUD operations that you just need to get out of the way before you can build
the more interesting stuff.

~~~
dadair
While not baked into the framework itself, I've found a few repositories that
aim to make CRUD a bit easier: [https://github.com/aldeed/meteor-
autoform/](https://github.com/aldeed/meteor-autoform/)
[https://github.com/aldeed/meteor-simple-
schema/](https://github.com/aldeed/meteor-simple-schema/)

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dadair
I've been using Meteor for sideprojects to learn Javascript. While I like the
ecosystem and meteor itself, I have found it hard (as someone new to
Javascript itself) to learn "best practices" while using Meteor. I've tried
several times to use different testing frameworks, but I end up getting
frustrated with not knowing what I need to mock, how I should package things,
etc.

~~~
amirouche
meteor as a lot of "specifics" that what I don't like about it.

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jfaucett
On first glance I thought this was a joke:

"Required

Javascript - JS first?! Yes soldier, don't question me again or I will karate
chop you!

Shell (Terminal)

HTML & CSS

JSON

MongoDB

Handlebars

Git & GitHub

jQuery

LESS and/or SASS

Underscore and/or Lo-Dash

Bootstrap

NodeJS

Cordova

ElasticSearch

Ionic - Meteor Package Meteoric "

Then immediately following, "Now that you know the above you are deemed worthy
to tap into the power and awesomeness of Meteor!"

Meteor's probably a good framework (I wouldn't know one way or the other since
I haven't tried it), but from that summary it doesn't seem like an easy sell
to someone looking for a framework to use.

~~~
evo_9
The author was trying to point out how many different pieces you'd have to
hack together to get to the equivalent of what Meteor gives you out of the
box.

So no, you don't need to install all that other stuff to use Meteor if that's
what you took the author to mean.

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jxm262
Thanks for this. I'm brand new to Meteor and have been looking for resources.

Does anyone have an idea of when the official Windows installation will be
released? I've been struggling with trying to get this working correctly on my
windows pc and signed up for their email list when it comes out. Hopefully
soon?

~~~
pmalynin
For any kind of serverside development I recommend you get a Linux VM. I too
prefer to develop on windows but one must understand that in this day and age
no one will take you seriously of you host on Windows.

~~~
pc86
> one must understand that in this day and age no one will take you seriously
> of you host on Windows.

Must I? We clearly don't talk to the same people, then. Not only have I never
judged someone or something based on what web host they use (seriously?), I've
never heard anyone say or intimate that they would, either.

~~~
taternuts
Honestly I think the issue really is with the compatibility problems you run
into, especially when trying out newer stuff that was written to targin
linux/mac first and foremost. You don't always run into issues, but every now
and then you get some node-gyp build snafu or something that causes you to go
on a google-fest for potentially obscure fixes. I've had a win7 laptop as my
main machine for awhile, and generally did most of my development either in a
vagrant VM or using Cloud 9 (fixes build issues and allows me to work on it
everywhere). I think having a mac or using linux just makes your life a lot
easier as a developer as long as you aren't doing .NET. Suddenly all the
tutorials, example code, and default installation instructions just work.

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dfischer
Meteor is cool but component based architecture is even better and Meteor
doesn't really lend it's hand to that. It's a lot of dom action
binding/coupling.

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joshowens
Thanks for sharing this with HN :)

~~~
stared
My pleasure. I like this meta-introducation approach - i.e. when there is
abundance of introductions its worth make an introduction to introductions.

As a side note, one of things that made me using Meteor.js is the easiness of
starting (largely to great official examples and tutorials).

BTW: I highly recommend Discover Meteor by Sacha Greif & Tom Coleman
([https://www.discovermeteor.com/](https://www.discovermeteor.com/)). One of
the best tutorial books I went through.

~~~
puranjay
Question as an aspiring web developer with a moderate-high degree of comfort
in Javascript, and low-moderate comfort in Ruby: would you recommend giving
100% to mastering Rails, or dabbling with Meteor from time to time?

The aim is to not get a job as a developer, but build my own projects.

Apologies if this kind of question is better suited for Stackoverflow

~~~
stared
For side small side projects, where you want start and move quickly - I
totally recommend Meteor. Before knowing _any_ framework I started reading on
Meteor - and literally in hours, I had a simple app.

(Actually, it's how I use it. I am mainly data scientist; I do some webdev,
but its not my main thing.)

