As a total Meteor virgin, a couple of days ago I started to ‘port’ a rough working prototype from pure Javascript (eventListeners, getElementById, InnerHTML and all that) to Meteor, and got it working - I suspect not yet in a ‘Meteroic’ way - but whatever, so far so good. The install worked, I didn’t have to jump through hoops. Nice.
Then I read an MDG(what?) post that scrambled my brain and made me want to run away. I saw words like Blaze, React, and even [gasp] Angular. Errr… what? Oh, and what’s all that stuff about Globe or Universe or whatever it’s called? Can’t I just use our own servers?
As an existing co-dev in Ember (we tried and ditched Angular) I came to Meteor because I thought it was a more compact, all-in-one solution for building a js-driven (web)app that I could then package up with Cordova for any platform, and run on our server. Simple.
My Question: do I need any of that other other stuff or can I just use Meteor with the cognitively zen-like simplicity I envisioned that last paragraph?
I saw words like Blaze, React, and even [gasp] Angular. Errr… what?
Blaze, React and Angular are view layers. Blaze is the view layer that Meteor created themselves.
Blaze will be ditched for React and Angular.
Oh, and what’s all that stuff about Globe or Universe or whatever it’s called? Can’t I just use our own servers?
I think you mean Galaxy, the premium hosting service of Meteor. You can still use your own servers, but Galaxy tries to make the deployment of Meteor apps as easy as possible. It’s a PaaS, like Heroku is.
My Question: do I need any of that other other stuff or can I just use Meteor with the cognitively zen-like simplicity I envisioned that last paragraph?
Absolutely yes, you can use Meteor any way you want.
I came to Meteor hoping to escape framework overload. As far as I can tell from my first few steps, Meteor seems to handle view stuff fine and I wouldn’t want to use anything else, so mention of other frameworks was a real surprise.
From reading the discussion with the MDG linked in my post, it also appears support for Blaze is now continuing. However, I had’t seen mention of Blaze in the docs and tutorials I’ve used, so I guess it’s Meteor ‘magic’ that just works as I develop my Meteor app.
With our servers already running stuff, I wouldn’t want to pay to deploy, but I get what they’re doing there with Galaxy.
Bottom line is: after some years in this game I’ve become really framework-weary (you know: use THIS new hotness! No, use THAT!, Now X is the new Y! The new A is what B should have been! blahblahblah).
I just want to get to know Meteor and build apps with it without having to even think about anything else. If that’s possible.
If you want the recommended happy path just follow the guide: http://guide.meteor.com/. There will be a big update to it soon too when 1.3 is released.
As Meteor opens up and becomes more modular the Guide will be the place to find the curated approach that was once enforced by Meteor’s actual architecture. That allows MDG to make Meteor more flexible and to break it out into modules that can be used independently while still providing a one-stop shop approach to app creation for those looking to just get stuff done.