We Are Pioneers: the Journey to Ember.js

We Are Pioneers: the Journey to Ember.js(hawkins.io)

45 points by joefiorini 12 years ago | 22 comments

weego 12 years ago |

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.

trek 12 years ago | |

> this is one of the most ridiculously vacuous, self-aggrandising pieces of nonsense I have ever seen submitted to HN.

You must be new to Hacker News then. Welcome!

ynniv 12 years ago | |

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

machty 12 years ago | | |

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

delambo 12 years ago | |

Agreed. I was laughing out loud at some of the analogies, but the author does make some good points -- it's really early in the client side framework evolution.

ahawkins 12 years ago | |

I was afraid it would come off like this. I picked the analogy and went with it.

psycr 12 years ago | | |

Don't worry about it. The commenter here is wrong in assuming that using history to understand our own narrative implies something about the scale or scope of the original, or our own.

Events need not be the same for us to try to use them to understand and vocalize our experiences.

Great writeup! Some days I feel similarly about Ember.

dclowd9901 12 years ago | |

At first I thought it was a parody or satire. But then it never turned and I cringed torturously.

danso 12 years ago | |

If I didn't know better, I'd accuse you of secretly being the OP and writing this comment that just begs jaded HN users to click through.

ahawkins 12 years ago | | |

Nah I'm the author :)

candybar 12 years ago |

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.

kailuowang 12 years ago |

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 12 years ago | |

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.

yaccc123123 12 years ago |

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.

jcutrell 12 years ago |

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.

jt2190 12 years ago |

  > 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 12 years ago | |

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.

boubiyeah 12 years ago |

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.

centrinoblue 12 years ago |

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.

it_learnses 12 years ago |

What sets Ember apart from Angular?

camus 12 years ago |

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.

> 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.

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)