Is meteor the way to go?

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I ran into meteor recently and fell in love with it. I’m thinking about moving an already written app from Laravel + jquery to meteor. Since the development of original app a lot has changed and real time reactivity is more an importance than it once was, hence to move to meteor.

After reading a lot of posts on the forum, I’m getting concerned that maybe meteor is not as stable as I once thought. I’ve already had to rewrite my app once to meet Laravel 5+ so I’m not looking to do it two more times after a rewrite to meteor.

a few things in particular are scaring me.

  1. No more blaze. I really don’t want to learn react. One of the reasons I came to meteor was because of ease of use.
  2. No buult in router and the fact that maybe it will be coming soon. I’m fine with using flow router but if it becomes baked in, then I’ll have to rewrite later.
  3. What else do I not know being totally new to meteor.

Lastly, I’d like to say I think meteor is the best thing I’ve seen in development in a really long time and I want to adopt it.

So should I just push forward using flow router and blaze? I really don’t want to learn react. I’ve been using viewJS with Laravel and I’d like to use that but I don’t think it’s supported.

Or should I just stick with what’s working (Laravel) + vue js and call it a day?

Any advice or suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks in advance

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I am literally in the exact same situation you are. I have a large application written in Laravel/jQuery and just ran in to Meteor today. From what I gather you can use Angular with Meteor which is something I’m very familiar with from using it all day long at my day job. So I’m thinking this is the right direction for me.

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Yeah. Angular would be new for me, but I’ve looked at it and it works well with meteor. From what I read they are definitely going with React. So it probably make sense to learn that for compatability and future updates. I just really don’t like the way React is written with it being embedded in the HTML. Maybe I don’t know enough about it, but I literally went to the website, looked at the tutorials and docs and thought WTF…I’ll just stick with what I know. :slightly_frowning_face:

But then I go back to Laravel and Vue JS and jquery and say…shit, I hate all these extra steps. Meteor is everything I’ve ever wanted. Why can’t it just be a little more mature. Lol

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Yeah, I hear you. I put in so much work to just get accounts working in Laravel and the meteor system does it for you for free with all sorts of external auth types. I don’t want to waste any more time on the old stuff at this point.

Although I’ll have to look into it more to make sure that Angular is just as supported as React.

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@ralanyo @caseydarwinstein

The React syntax is definitely weird at first, as is the whole, thinking-in-components mindset. But once you get over the initial hump, you’ll appreciate how straightforward it is to reason around the flow of data through the apps, especially if you add a flux implementation to your stack.

Can I ask where you heard that there will be a built in router soon? The current state of things, as I understand it, is that flow-router is the recommended router per the meteor guide. I have not heard of a router in the core yet though. Please someone correct me if I am wrong.

The other nice thing about React is simply that it is popular, which means there are a lot of resources out there.

Regarding the state of change of Meteor, I’ll add this. The only constant in the entire javascript ecosystem is that it is constantly changing. Things are changing with Meteor. No doubt about that, but I think that the severity of the changes, as described by some folks, is a bit exaggerated. The biggest change right now is that Blaze won’t see any extensive development from MDG going forward, which has caused understandable heartache.

I think that a lot of the uneasiness stems from the fact that communication from MDG has been a bit “too good” recently. By that I mean that they have been asking the community questions, sharing betas, sharing ideas, participating in the forums, and in general, have been a lot more open about what is going on with the platform than they were in the past. So, we are seeing the sausage being made and it is nasty if you watch too closely. So, there’s been a lot energetic discussion as the meat moves through the grinder. Elixir this, React that, why not Webpack, and on and on and on… There is substance to it, but a lot of it is noise. Interesting noise, but still noise.

To torture the metaphor a bit more… if you step back and just enjoy the sausage and egg sandwich instead of watching the meat grinder, you’ll see it isn’t as bad as the forums would make it seem. :hamburger: I am 100% sure there are plenty of people who disagree with me though, so take what I say with a grain of salt.

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should I just stick with what’s working (Laravel) + vue js and call it a day?

Honestly if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Keep your eye on Meteor and if the things that are making you feel uncomfortable about it get sussed out, give it a go. But don’t jump in headfirst hoping those things get sorted out in time for your app’s specific needs.

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@generalledger
I heard some rumblings somewhere that there might be a core router at some point. Not sure how true it is. Flow seems fine though as you have stated.

As far as react, I’ll probably give it another go, but I really do like blaze from the little I’ve been messing around with meteor. Maybe that’s because I’m a newbie.

I like your sausage analogy, I just want to make sure the meat isn’t too spicy before I bite into it. :worried:

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I like angular-meteor. I just hope the community around it grows. I’m fairly certain-- at least at this point-- there is only one angular-meteor tutorial on the entire internet (3 if you count the angular 2 version and mobile slack version on angular-meteor.com). So that’s a little worrying.

If you did go the angular-meteor route, I would probably go with angular2 + meteor. I’m guessing, whenever angular2-meteor gets out of beta, it’ll be easier to go from your angular2-meteor beta app to angular2-meteor than it would be to go from your angular1-meteor app to an angular2-meteor app. Plus, with such a small community, I’m not sure how much support will be around for ng1 apps when angular2-meteor is out.

Overall, it seems to me like there is more activity with react (more packages + more tutorials + more forum posts).

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Actually angular meteor is being used as much as react is. The only thing is that they are not the loudest on the forums.

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Flow Router is the way to go right now. Here’s the official Meteor routing guide: http://guide.meteor.com/routing.html

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@sashko
Thanks for the info. Being new to meteor, I haven’t seen this guide. This is awesome!
I was going off the documentation that is on the meteor website. Am I blind or was this link not located on the website?

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The link is currently not located on the website, we are currently finishing up the initial batch of work - we’d rather wait a few weeks to promote something more complete and polished rather than jumping the gun.

I’ve just been posting links on the forums to see what people think, feedback has been positive so far!

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@sashko
Wow, it’s awesome! Especially to a new comer. Keep it up. Glad I know about it now. So in your opinion, should i dive into react with meteor or start a new project with blaze?

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@ralanyo

I think the best combination is angular2 with meteor.

Why?:

  • ionic support at the moment is there no framework for react
  • angular2 is like react with a little bit more
  • personally i don’t like jsx (i think is tricky to work with designers)
  • performance
  • and angular2 is now in beta and the angular team says “is now ready for big apps” watch on blogspot

i hope i can help

happy new year

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I think React with Meteor has a few rough edges, so if you want the smoothest experience it might be good to go with Blaze for now. On the other hand, if you want to use React and are comfortable working around some stuff, go right ahead! A lot of the guide articles should still be helpful.

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I ran into meteor recently and fell in love with it. I’m thinking about moving an already written app from Laravel + jquery to meteor. Since the development of original app a lot has changed and real time reactivity is more an importance than it once was, hence to move to meteor.

Awesome choice!

After reading a lot of posts on the forum, I’m getting concerned that maybe meteor is not as stable as I once thought.

Meteor is as vibrant as it always have been. That’s what happens when you play with toys that are continuously improved.

I’ve already had to rewrite my app once to meet Laravel 5+ so I’m not looking to do it two more times after a rewrite to meteor.

Hate to break it to you, software engineering is a never ending process. If Meteor can offer you benefits versus Laravel (and there are a lot…), go for it. Else, well…

  1. No more blaze. I really don’t want to learn react. One of the reasons I came to meteor was because of ease of use.

Blaze is not dead. And there are many followers of Blaze, so that won’t be your real problem. However, you’ll notice that there are parts of Blaze that need re-thinking and better solutions. For the time being, don’t worry too much.

  1. No buult in router and the fact that maybe it will be coming soon. I’m fine with using flow router but if it becomes baked in, then I’ll have to rewrite later.

If a router gets ‘baked’ in, it will most likely as a standard package. As there are a multitude of routers (Flow, Iron, React), this isn’t a need to worry over.

  1. What else do I not know being totally new to meteor.

Change can be good, change can be bad. Adventures are cool, but they come with hardship.

Lastly, I’d like to say I think meteor is the best thing I’ve seen in development in a really long time and I want to adopt it.
So should I just push forward using flow router and blaze? I really don’t want to learn react. I’ve been using viewJS with Laravel and I’d like to use that but I don’t think it’s supported.

My best advice is to never do something what people expect you to do, but what you need. At the moment, your best bet is with Meteor.

Or should I just stick with what’s working (Laravel) + vue js and call it a day?

Nah, you’ll love Meteor and you’ll save amazing time. And start whining about what isn’t perfect (like me and many others).

Any advice or suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks in advance

In that case, take this

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@miningsam
Awesome response. Thank you very much. The more time a spend with Meteor, the more I can’t imagine going back to other solutions. I realize that the company needs to make money with Galaxy and other products to keep up with it…

Honestly, in my opinion, it’s so good, that even though it’s free to use, I think most people would be willing to pay for a LTS release that aren’t Galaxy customers. A developer pro edition so to speak. Of course if it is mature enough. <- this all comes from a total meteor newb, so I might be just talking our of my @$$. Laravel came out with 5.1 LTS in 2015 which was nice. It took me a while to upgrade everything to 5.1, but it’s nice knowing that I won’t have to rewrite it for at least 3 years if i don’t want to. Only thing is i want to… ha ha, in meteor!.

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A bit on a tangent, but I have an app I’m building that requires native components like WebView, hence React Native. I did some research and looks like the way RN works, Meteor can’t support it with minimongo and DDP like it does for any web-based frontend like React proper or Angular.

I’m going ahead with RN. So my question is is there a chance at least that Meteor is looking at integration with RN as well for future releases? Thanks for a heads up so I know whether I need to leave Meteor for something else like raw Express for my server side needs.

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I spent winter break on a new React + Meteor project, not knowing React, and I loved it! It took a little while to get into some good patterns, but once you see how the data flows and how it updates, you will be convinced I think. Give it a few days and you will be rewarded for years to come.

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