Meteor already does many things for developer happiness. Can we move one step ahead ?
I keep seeing lot of support questions about how to use Cordova APIs in a mobile app or may be about a new template API. Lot of time is spent to teach newbies about the nuances in building a production app.
Meteor to its credit, provide some apps in examples folder. Is it good enough ?
Why not MDG develop reference apps for different contexts.
Full stack Web App / Client only Web App / Web App with external APIs
Cordova iOS App
Cordova Android App
IOT integration with Meteor App
Showcase how the APIs / templates are envisioned to be used in the real production using an App.I believe MDG can be a real contributor here and show how it is done.
This will act as a documentation and testing ground for anything newly added in your development. Each document explaining a feature / context can point to a specific app or a module in an app.
Community can create alternate implementations for the same reference apps. Even some gamification with discourse badges can be thrown here for best / optimised solutions for each reference app.
Slowly we can build a large collection of apps which covers each aspect of Meteor APIs.
This will not only avoid the repeated support questions from newbies but also enable them to get going faster for complex projects.
This sounds like a lot of work to start but it will be really useful to scale the developer community and move beyond the basic CRUD apps development and help them build new exciting stuffs on top of them.
Do let me know if other platforms (Ember/Angular/React) uses the same or different approach. Any limitations in the suggested approach ?
PS: We have few opensource projects like telescope, reaction built from community. what we need is from the horse mouth.
Meteor is already making me a lot happier. I’m an old developer who sees Meteor as a way to build highly interactive and collaborative software more easily. I envy the folks who’ve never known ecosystems other than Meteor, you lucky kids.
Meteor’s not a panacea. Good UX is a lot more than the enabling features of Meteor. It takes a lot of effort to do things right despite Meteor’s clean delivery and abundance of packages. But in a world where the customer-touching edge is leading the way rather than following the direction of corporate back-room, closed-door planners, Meteor is a flag bearer at the head of the throng.
We need lot of demo, Just as I have no idea what exactly DDP does and you have 30 seconds to prove with relevant features that often use in real world.
PixiJS and Phaser are those framework that tell lot of examples, it’s also a good way to test on different web browsers efficiently without touching the code.
When Rails exploded it was partly because it was making complicated things
less complicated and partly because it could be seen holding up in the real world
and making money for its creator(s) from the word go
The primary reason I gave serious consideration to Ember last year
was the fact that it was kicking ass and taking names for Discourse.
This week people are salivating over React/React Native not because
of any given feature so much as because you can see it in action with
Facebook & Instagram.
I think Meteor is sorely lacking this kind of real-world proof of concept - apps that developers use both to choose tools and to make a case for those tools with management.
What you’re suggesting is a great idea. After a while, we could point not to just ‘Meteor example app A’ but successful, real-world implementations based on that example.
At the core of the issue is the tradeoff between making the framework better vs. making more materials that make it easier for people to use and understand it.
I think until now we have focused more on improving the framework because a lot of other people are writing learning materials. It’s a lot harder for someone in the community to build core features for the framework, so I think it make sense for us to focus on programming.
I think the situation will improve soon, though! We are now hiring for the engineer at large position, which involves “Develop a technical curriculum that can be used to introduce Meteor at meetups, corporate classes, and conference workshops everywhere. Recruit and train teachers.” and “Create Meteor Cookbook articles to help developers solve the most common problems that you’re hearing about.”
If anyone is interested in helping develop the documentation and recommended patterns for Meteor, please apply by emailing jobs@meteor.com!