šŸ”„ Blaze Fans, All Systems Go!

Oh man, that would be great - really.

A few months back, I determined that Blaze might not be making it - and for various reasons I spoke with my client for the main project Iā€™m working on now and we decided for me to take a month or so off and learn react and then come back and refactor the whole project. Iā€™m almost done with that (Actually, I think Iā€™ll be back where I was by the end of today). And I have to say, I feel much more better for it. Learning any new JS technology typically makes you a better JS programmer, and I for sure feel like thatā€™s the case with React.

HOWEVERā€¦ if I felt like Blaze was going to have a future like it might have now that weā€™ve made these moves back then - maybe I would have just stuck with it.

I think this will have a great impact for those whoā€™ve learned ā€œMeteorā€ and are happy with Blaze. Especially those who canā€™t just take a month off and pick up React. Granted, maybe I went overboard with my React training, Iā€™d say you could probably get by with taking a week off :slight_smile:

All and all, I feel like this is a really good thing you all have done here making blaze itā€™s own thing.

+1 for bringing Virtual Dom to blaze - Even though I am a React developer at heart now - I was once enjoyed Blazing it up a long time ago. And from my Blazing days, I feel like there is something Blaze still has to offer the scene.

There is something about the flexibility of Blaze/Meteor/Session on one side of things and React/Redux/Meteor on the other. For example (now, this might be wrong for several reasons - but Iā€™m bringing it up anyways) I like how I can just import Session on the server where I have a method to insert some data into the databaseā€¦ And if I find that the user is not logged in - I set a Session variable which in turn triggers a ā€œloginā€ modal screen to request my user to login (I throw an error also right after that Session.set). I agree, that I should be checking for this on the client side - and I actually am. I just like the fact that with Session - I CAN do this from the server. And my component watching that Session variable still gets ā€œre-renderedā€ because of the createContainer context - so, in effect - itā€™s kind of like redux, I know itā€™s not the same for a lot of reasons - but this way just seams simpler to me for now. And thatā€™s what I mean - I like how with Blaze/Meteor you can just ā€œdoā€ what you want to do sometimes, yes I like the structure of React, itā€™s made me a better developer. But sometimes, freedom feels good, and getā€™s the job done.

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Agreed ā€¦

What we are looking at right now is implementing Incremental DOM https://github.com/meteor/blaze/issues/45, which in theory, could be done rather quickly and produce great results. I have seen benchmarks where Virtual DOM didnā€™t provide that much improvement for large pages on weaker devices (due namely to the doubling of memory, you hold the page, as it seems, twice in memory)

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THE PROPHECY HAS BEEN RESTORED
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I feel you man - Iā€™m a pretty big Blaze fan myself, and Iā€™m glad someone is taking it to the future.

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When did we get Session on the server? Or am I misreading you? Somehow youā€™re linking Session with server. Are you saying you can pass flexible global state (Session) from the client to the server ā€“ and you enjoy that? And if true are you then suggesting you have limitations on what you can pass to the server with the React framework?

Are you suggesting, in theory, with Blaze implementing ā€˜Incremental DOMā€™ it will be faster (less processing) than React?

Yes, I am suggesting that :slight_smile:
Once we implement it, weā€™ll know for sure.

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Oh my gosh, I realize on the second read, that was HORRIBLY writtenā€¦ You understood me, but I almost didnā€™t understand MYSELF after reading that a second time. For clarity.

Way back when my client and I decided to switch to React for this project, if we had felt like Blaze had a stable futureā€¦ Maybe not as stable as React, but at least felt like we had some kind of support or future (like we do now that itā€™s becoming a community project and could live on) - then, maybe we would have stuck with Blaze.

I think this breathes life back into something that I think is valuable to hang on to.

I feel embarrassed nowā€¦ And I recognize that perhaps this is only actually working in practice because Iā€™m importing the method, and I guess this check is actually happening on the client sideā€¦ Funny, I never got an error about this in the console - It seams to be working just fine - heh.

So, yes - I am saying that I put a Session.set() in my method - Hereā€™s the gist to see what Iā€™m doing. I guess youā€™re right, this is possibly bad design.

Wellā€¦ Long Live Bad Design!!! Wait, I meanā€¦ Blaze!!! (So yeah, Blaze never encouraged me to do this, I came up with this stupid idea all on my own)

Thanks @aadams :slight_smile:

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I have to say, Iā€™ve been very impressed with the level of activity on the Blaze repo since it was ā€œofficiallyā€ opened to contributions just recently.

These are still early days, but so far, many thanks in particular to @sashko, @mitar, @miro, and @ramez for their efforts.

Letā€™s keep the momentum going. Everyone, if you have the time and are passionate about Blaze, find a way to contribute!

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I still havenā€™t been able to get an invite to the slack channel. Would love to get that figured out so I can participate in the day to day conversation.

So great, looking forward to blaze in my non-meteor projects!

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You have tried http://slack.blazejs.org, right? :wink:

Yeah, it just says invite_limit_reached :frowning:

Well, according to Slack documentation, too many invitations apparently were not accepted, so they automatically enforced the rate limit.

I have manually re-sent all pending invitations, so letā€™s hope that will fix it.

As I already mentioned, you can PM me your email and Iā€™ll gladly invite you.

The invitation rate limit has been lifted so weā€™re good to go :slight_smile:

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Very glad too see, that blaze can go on. I really donā€™t like react and angular. I LOVE BLAZE. So hopefully it grows.

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One of the reasons I loved Meteor was Blaze . I am not planning to switch to react , in other words, I am not planning to switch from simplicity to complexity.

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I love blaze too, but take a look at react and itā€™s flexibility. Two different worlds with their strength and weakness. But just spending one week may help you choose better solution.