Newbie developer here with some Meteor experience:
Apollo looks great for an enterprise line of business app.
If I’m looking to build a crm app between now and year end should I be starting with the Meteor integrations (e.g. get accounts, etc. for free) or go more with the full-stack Apollo Client and Server example app route (that uses React, Webpack, Babel, and Redux).
Totally appreciate that this is subjective and depends on needs, so my context is that I
see the Apollo direction of travel;
assume that at some tipping point it will be better to invest in the future approach; and
have time on my side in that I’m not accountable for having anything in production now (I don’t want to spend time reinventing the wheel that Meteor has already made pretty awesome and don’t have the years under my belt for heavy hacking but I like learning and can handle instability because nothing will be in production for now.
Totally up to speed on all the podcasts and youtube vids, etc. just don’t know enough to help myself yet so would appreciate the view!
Basically have loads to learn anyway and wondered if I should learn the new world as I have some time on my side.
@meteor1 I completely relate with your situation and have faced the exact same questions over the previous months. I started web development with Meteor building LOB apps as a small part of my current position. Meteor 1.3 opened many new doors, and Apollo opens even more for me. The downside to this is the amount of choice can be overwhelming, particularly for a new developer, or a part-time enthusiast like myself. Here are my thoughts:
Meteor is awesome. One of the best parts is the easy learning curve for Node development. No worrying about Webpack configs or “javascript fatigue.” You just build stuff. For many of my LOB projects, this is easily good enough. A lot of my LOB apps are for a small team or meant to solve a small problem, and Meteor makes it so easy to quickly build something secure, and with Cordova, make apps for my very mobile team.
However, we use a lot of SQL, and up until Apollo, I couldn’t access that data easily. That’s not the case anymore. I just finished my first Apollo project, and I must say, it’s pretty cool stuff. Can’t wait to dig in more. However, I haven’t completely abandoned Meteor and am still using the Accounts system. I think my next project will attempt an Express app without Meteor at all. The Apollo docs have some great examples though for both ways: http://docs.apollostack.com/.
If you’re okay with using Mongo, a pure Meteor route will probably be easier, but if you need SQL or something else, you’ll definitely need to incorporate Apollo. Good luck on your learning and project.