
We Are Pioneers: the Journey to Ember.js - joefiorini
http://hawkins.io/2013/07/we-are-pioneers/?tweet_clock_time=1372853454
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weego
I'm sorry but this is one of the most ridiculously vacuous, self-aggrandising
pieces of nonsense I have ever seen submitted to HN. Even more so when it's
just another framework, and not really even a particularly popular or
revolutionary one. Pushing boundaries like travelling across the sea to an
almost entirely unknown continent with little to no chance of return
regardless of what you find there? Please. I think we need to stand back and
take a deep breath.

~~~
ynniv
Any positive post about Ember seems to be float higher on the front page than
it deserves...

~~~
machty
Eh, so does any angular post on the omg power of directives.

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candybar
Grandiosity aside, what's pioneering about Ember.js? AngularJS, Backbone,
Meteor and even Dojo and YUI I think all have better claims to being pioneers.
As much as people hate Rails and the Rails community for having this attitude,
at least Rails had that wow factor when it came out and there wasn't really
anything like it out there. Ember.js? What does Ember.js have right now that
AngularJS or Knockout or Backbone or whatever didn't have a year ago?
AngularJS is both easier to get started with, offers much more flexibility and
is much more interesting from a technical standpoint, not to mention that its
feature set is much deeper.

This is like Apple's marketing, except without the product and aimed at
developers.

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kailuowang
I started to notice a similar mindset between the groups of people who
advocate for Rails and Ember.js. They tend to be more opinionated and very
proud of the technology choice they made. I have nothing against it, it's just
intriguing.

~~~
vinceguidry
I've been building apps for a few years now. I started by taking established
projects and making them fit a specific role. Later I started building them
from scratch. Now I'm starting to delve into the higher level "theory" behind
making stuff like this. I put theory in quotes because it's not really theory,
it's just observations made over years of experience, approaching theory from
the bottom rather than the top.

What I learned from doing it that way is that there's a level of process
abstraction which is higher than "best practices" but lower than pure CS
theory. It's the level at which documents like 12factor.net are. The best word
I've found that describes it is "opinionated". You want software that's
opinionated enough to drive design decisions but not so much that it dictates
them.

People are very proud of this sort of understanding because it is hard-won.
When you look at 12factor.net, if you haven't been developing for awhile, you
might not understand just how useful a document it is. You might be thinking
top-down rather than bottom-up. But if you're like me, you've seen lots of
anti-patterns in the things you've built and long for a way to get them out of
your apps.

That's where frameworks come in. They make decisions for you that cut back on
those anti-patterns. Very useful if that's what you're looking for. When I
first started building, I found Rails to be too much bloat, too complex, so I
used Sinatra. Now I have a large project that I'm finishing up, and I wish now
I'd used Rails. You can build an opinionated Sinatra app, but why when you
could just use Rails?

You don't think you need someone else to make decisions for you, until you do.

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yaccc123123
Isn't the text's introduction slightly glorifiyng? It tells the story of the
noble settlers who had to fight troubles and sometimes even lost their lives -
it leaves out that they actually have slayn all the indigenous people whose
country they invaded. Colonialization of North America isn't just some exiting
bunch of tales about adventurous pioneers, but actually a quite cruel story of
suppression and murder. So maybe you should consider some other entry point
for your text.

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jcutrell
I think it's important to rethink this progression a bit. In the early years
of Rails, what else was around? What other Ruby-oriented frameworks did we
find that did what Rails did? How many people were developing web-based MVC
apps on a day-to-day basis in comparison to how many are developing them now?
GitHub wasn't even around until three years after Rails v1 - seems like maybe
GitHub on its own will have untold effects on speeding up development time on
a project like Ember.

Let's consider also the simple fact that ALL client-side MVC frameworks are
JavaScript (unless they are precompiler-based, which none of the big ones
really are, currently). The fact that all of them are based on the same
language, the massive cracks in server-side systems that are further
exacerbated by language idiosyncrasies are reduced significantly.

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jt2190

      > I've seen [the problems that occur when you're working 
      > with an immature ecosystem] before. I started with Rails 
      > in 2006. It was difficult in the earlier years. It has 
      > only really matured in the past 3 years. I think Rails 
      > 3.1 really embodies everything you need to make a 
      > certain class of web applications. Ember and its 
      > ecosystem are so far off. 
    

Using rails as our yardstick:

    
    
        Rails Releases           Ember.js
        ---------------------    --------------------------
        3.1.0 August 31, 2011    Now + 6.5 Years (End 2020)
        3.0.0 August 29, 2010    Now + 5.5 Years (End 2019)
        2.0.0 December 6, 2007   Now + 2 Years (Mid 2015)
        1.0.0 December 13, 2005  Now (Mid 2013)
    

So starting an Ember.js project today is like starting a Rails app in 2005.
Probably too much headache to take on for six month to a year long projects,
but if you're looking at a 2-3 year timeframe and Ember.js gives you a
technology advantage over other frameworks, then it might a good time to try
it.

~~~
scardine
I dated Ember for a while but I ended up married with Angular.

Ember is really cute and charming. When it works it is all magic - but when it
doesn't it is way harder to figure out what is wrong.

So far, Angular seems to have a stronger foundation and will eventually catch
up in beauty.

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boubiyeah
It probably felt right when he wrote it? Assuming some substances were abused.
Terrible post... MVC is decades old, single page apps are getting old too;
Doesn't matter whether your view is called an Ember.View or not.

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centrinoblue
_yawn_ good luck with that. I'm sure the settlers in their day would have
moved onto something better if they had had the sense to recognize it at the
time.

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it_learnses
What sets Ember apart from Angular?

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camus
Nice , good luck for you , now only developers eventualy decide what's best
for them. If your framework is the best , people will adopt it.

