Getting started with Meteor.js

[evo_9]

Meteor is by far my favorite new platform for side projects. I love how easy it is to get something up and running, the integrated build system and the simplicity of deploying your projects to a meteor host.

I wish there was an easy way to use a different database although I get it, it's part of what makes Meteor so easy get something up and running quickly.

My gut is that if Meteor weren't solely tied to MongoDB and instead had an easy way to switch to Firebase, Parse, etc this platform would really take off.

[tlianza]

One thing I was surprised to run into is how basic CRUD operations don't have an out-of-the-box solution, like they did even with Rails many years ago.

When I read the "Discover Meteor" guide and they got to the part about handling submit buttons by writing jQuery handlers with e.preventDefault and all that, I was really surprised. Similarly I didn't see obvious, baked-in solutions to validation, or sharing templates between "edit" and "create" situations.

Then, there's the built-in Meteor accounts stuff, which does not make it easy to create an admin page for users, which again I expected to be a straightfoward task. And, not only that, but once you do start to build that you read more-and-more about how allowing the client to make certain modifications is insecure, and so you should start pushing things back to Meteor methods...

Anyway, a lot of this stuff has given me pause. I love the runtime speed, but the speed of getting something up and running (in terms of dev time) seems considerably slower than the equivalent in Rails, particularly around basic CRUD operations that you just need to get out of the way before you can build the more interesting stuff.

[primigenus]

You aren't tied to MongoDB.

You can switch to Firebase (https://atmospherejs.com/mrt/firebase) or Parse or even REST APIs if you want. Someone is even writing a reactive MySQL driver (https://github.com/numtel/meteor-mysql).

[wfleming]

Ditto: so much about Meteor just makes the day-to-day work of building something a real pleasure compared to other tools.

For me, the thing really holding it back from more serious work is that I've had real problems getting testing to work well: Velocity[1] has had a bunch of problems for me.

I hope things like the focus on MongoDB and the lack of good automated testing tools are just because Meteor is still fairly immature. It could be a really good tool for a lot of use-cases.

[1]: http://velocity.meteor.com

[dadair]

I've been using Meteor for sideprojects to learn Javascript. While I like the ecosystem and meteor itself, I have found it hard (as someone new to Javascript itself) to learn "best practices" while using Meteor. I've tried several times to use different testing frameworks, but I end up getting frustrated with not knowing what I need to mock, how I should package things, etc.

[amirouche]

meteor as a lot of "specifics" that what I don't like about it.

[jfaucett]

On first glance I thought this was a joke:

"Required

Javascript - JS first?! Yes soldier, don't question me again or I will karate chop you!

Shell (Terminal)

HTML & CSS

JSON

MongoDB

Handlebars

Git & GitHub

jQuery

LESS and/or SASS

Underscore and/or Lo-Dash

Bootstrap

NodeJS

Cordova

ElasticSearch

Ionic - Meteor Package Meteoric "

Then immediately following, "Now that you know the above you are deemed worthy to tap into the power and awesomeness of Meteor!"

Meteor's probably a good framework (I wouldn't know one way or the other since I haven't tried it), but from that summary it doesn't seem like an easy sell to someone looking for a framework to use.

[evo_9]

The author was trying to point out how many different pieces you'd have to hack together to get to the equivalent of what Meteor gives you out of the box.

So no, you don't need to install all that other stuff to use Meteor if that's what you took the author to mean.

[bigpeopleareold]

GitHub as a requirement? So, I can't write a Meteor app without GitHub? :(

[jxm262]

Thanks for this. I'm brand new to Meteor and have been looking for resources.

Does anyone have an idea of when the official Windows installation will be released? I've been struggling with trying to get this working correctly on my windows pc and signed up for their email list when it comes out. Hopefully soon?

[emgee3]

This is actively being worked on by core developers. See https://github.com/meteor/meteor/wiki/Preview-of-Meteor-on-W... if you want to try the pre-release.

[rory]

I don't have a date, but I believe it is the next major item on the core development group's checklist. https://trello.com/b/hjBDflxp/meteor-roadmap

[pmalynin]

For any kind of serverside development I recommend you get a Linux VM. I too prefer to develop on windows but one must understand that in this day and age no one will take you seriously of you host on Windows.

[evo_9]

I found this, hope it helps: http://win.meteor.com

[dfischer]

Meteor is cool but component based architecture is even better and Meteor doesn't really lend it's hand to that. It's a lot of dom action binding/coupling.

[joshowens]

Thanks for sharing this with HN :)

[stared]

My pleasure. I like this meta-introducation approach - i.e. when there is abundance of introductions its worth make an introduction to introductions.

As a side note, one of things that made me using Meteor.js is the easiness of starting (largely to great official examples and tutorials).

BTW: I highly recommend Discover Meteor by Sacha Greif & Tom Coleman (https://www.discovermeteor.com/). One of the best tutorial books I went through.

[stared]

@joshowens, one more comment - the compilation is excellent, but for packages I think that (especially for a newcomer) it would be better to add a one sentence desc per package (especially as one do not need to start with learning all of them!) rather than providing 3 links (if one wish, one can easily jump from Atmosphere to GitHub).