

Dismissing Meteor.js as a Toy - 147
http://christopherdbui.com/post/2013/11/02/dismissing-meteor-as-a-toy.html

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konspence
This article really does nothing to contribute to the discourse on Meteor. At
best it would be a reasonable comment, but the content isn't worthy of an
article.

The author admits to not having used Meteor (in any real way), but then goes
on to defend it for ideological reasons: don't just say something is doomed to
failure, because we cannot predict whether it's the next Rails/Node/etc.

Target the framework you're writing about specifically. This article would be
just as valid in its logic if you replaced the word Meteor with any underdog
library/framework.

~~~
1qaz2wsx3edc
Agreed, the article should have been a comment in the previous thread. It
seems to be a popular trend on HN: when an author will write something that
reaches the front page; moments later you'll see a counter article from the
opposing point.

My only issue with this trend, is the low quality posts we see out of it,
which are just attempting to steal some thunder so-to-speak. Sometimes you get
valuable rebuttals. I just feel like most of the time these counter-point
posts could just be comments in the original thread.

This author, go on to quote the thread (albeit plagiarizing) the comments, and
what do we have at the end of it. A link to sign up to their Mailing List.

I'm unimpressed & annoyed by this post.

But I love Meteor & Rails.

------
Goopplesoft
I agree with your overarching sentiment in regards to this matter but I also
agree with the with the comment you called out. The software market has
significantly reduced friction/barriers to entry, considering this I think
age/life-cycle is a valid point of criticism. It doesn't take much to start a
project, boast its the next big thing even over mature static html, and then
abandon it. I've dealt with using these kinds of projects with some assumption
of stability and long-term reliability to be later left disappointed. So I
don't think that commenter was simply being a naysayer but instead raises a
valid remark on emergin software.

------
jsnk
In case people didn't read the blog post before coming to the comment section,
the blog is actually defending Meteor as a new framework that might be worth
observing.

I feel the same way about OP. Rails is awesome, but Meteor really excels at
some things Rails lags behind in. Data binding between database and browser
asynchronously which is doable in Rails but it is pain in the ass. Rails
simply wasn't made for this kind of app. Times have changed and user are
demanding different kind of UX for some apps. I am glad that there are new
tools like Meteor in development to fulfill these roles.

~~~
nostrademons
I think that much of the reaction in the original post comes from the overly-
bombastic headline: "Why meteor will kill Ruby on Rails". If it was sold as
"Meteor.js: an exciting new technology for building real-time webapps", I
could get behind that, because building real-time websites is currently hard
and Meteor makes it easy (easier?). But if you say Meteor is going to kill
Rails, you are positioning Rails as Meteor's competition: and when I look at
what Rails is used for (quickly building multi-page DB-backed sites with
relatively small levels of interactivity), Meteor _sucks_ at that job. There's
little reason to use it, and a lot of reason not to.

Hype and blind optimism kills promising new technologies far more often than
competitors do. Picking your competitors carefully is important. If you
position Meteor against Backbone or Angular, you might have a case, and then
we could evaluate based on the technical merits. But if you position it
against Rails, they're built for completely different use-cases, and so of
course Meteor is going to fall down.

