Hi all 
I’m somewhat new to web development, so I figured I’d go ahead and send a post out on here to get my feet wet with with interacting.
I also figure it could be useful for the community to see things from the angle of someone without a lot of dev experience (though people may want to avoid associating Meteor with the stigma of a beginner’s framework).
I was trying out ROR, as well as inspecting all of the various JS platforms that are out there (holy f*ck can that be a bit overwhelming for a novice). I am getting into web dev, as like many others, because I have some ideas for web apps (education related). ROR was certainly useful to get my feet wet with web frameworks, and the documentation/tutorials made it really approachable. However, this new paradigm for “asynchronous”, or from a layman’s perspective “real-time”, is totally obvious and opens so many doors for interactive apps.
From what I’ve read, Meteor seems to get a lot of hate as being “future-dependent”, and critics compare it to Apple, suggesting that by providing the entire framework, it is babying devs or dumbing things down. But is this really a bad thing? Apple, regardless of your outlook on it, is so successful because of its ability to bring technology towards the mainstream. So I think elitists want to bet against Meteor because they don’t like the idea of opening the doors to those who are less tech-savy. We should just hope that it goes with the “easy to learn, complex to master” mantra.
What makes me think Meteor is really awesome, is the fact that by attempting to provide an all encompassing solution, we are now able to acquire the input and ideas from people who would rather use technology as a means to an end, and not necessarily just for the means itself. And I think by enabling these types of people, you’re opening yourself up applications with a lot of utility, since these people may have more experience with the environments that need innovation.
I am looking forward to learning the ropes, and hope that I am able to stay with this framework as it matures. If we’re lucky, we can ride the… er… large wave that it makes on impact (clever marketing guys). I have a special place in my heart for projects like this, and it seems like the community is really passionate, which is inspiring.
From a beginner’s perspective- I do hope that the Meteor team is able to make the framework stable enough to support a seamless UX. I notice a lot of sites have flickering while loading, and even now, when I scroll up and down, the page behind this text box is scrolled, instead of this frame (at some point it fixed itself, not sure why though). And pressing tab does not induce a tab. There are so many small things that make a web app feel seamless- going “back” is a great example. I’ve yet to see a JS app that returns to the area of the page that you were at before going forward (*edit, should have checked this forum, it did). Or god forbid, we have the “clicking back just reloads the page” issue (though I’m sure there are workarounds for making this all look seamless). From a beginner’s perspective, I do hope the Meteor team is not only successful in making this a paradigm shifting asynchronous full framework, but I hope they give small-team devs the tools to iron out the small kinks, so that users can have their asynchronous cake and eat it on a smooth, coherent plate.
All the best!
