supporting's comments

supporting | 11 years ago | on: Missing the Point of Server-side Rendered JavaScript Apps

You gotta love the Orwellian naming on this one. "Ember FastBoot" meaning Ember-we've-been-selling-you-very-slow-booting-for-years-and-now-we're-hoping-to-mitigate-it-slightly-but-it's-still-vaporware.

Meanwhile, the commonsense approach has always been faster and simpler than this model: Use a small JS framework, not a bloated one, and only load the minimal UI and data set that you need to render the initial page at first. Load the rest later. This includes bootstrapping — remembering to put all the data you need to render the page inline as a JSON object in the HTML.

This can often result in less data sent over the wire than a large HTML page with tons of repeated DOM elements. It's also far easier to cache appropriately.

supporting | 11 years ago | on: Dart Programming Language Specification [pdf]

In Memoriam, Google Dart, 201X:

A few years ago, Dart was Google’s first foray into web programming languages. Built as a “20 percent” project, Dart developers started conversations, and built web applications that had never existed before. Dart helped shape the future of the browser before people really knew what “Beyond JavaScript” was.

Over the past decade, TypeScript, CoffeeScript, ClojureScript and ES7 have taken off, with communities springing up in every corner of the world. Because the growth of these communities has outpaced Dart's growth, we've decided to bid Dart farewell (or, "adiós"). We'll be focusing our energy and resources on making these other development platforms as amazing as possible for everyone who uses them.

We will shut down Dart within the next 3 months. Until then, there will be no impact on current Dart users, to give the programming community time to manage the transition. People can transpile their applications into JavaScript using Google Takeout (available until next year). Starting today, it will not be possible download or patch updates to existing copies of the Dart compiler.

Dart, the language, may be going away, but all of those incredible web apps that Dart users have created will live on. We are preserving an archive of the best of the bunch, which will be available online during this transitional period. If you don't want your app or name to be included in the community archive, you can remove Dart permanently from your Google account by visiting your YouTube preferences page, and clicking on "Advanced Settings". Please visit our Help Center for further details.

It's been a great few years, and we apologize to those still actively using the language. We hope people will find other programming communities to spark more projections and build even more amazing applications for the next decade and beyond.

---

(This is just in good fun ;) Likely? No. Possible? Sure seems to be.)

supporting | 12 years ago | on: I ported a JavaScript app to Dart

It's a little bit sad that Google pays people to have their entire job be to astroturf for Dart with blog posts like this one.

Being a "developer advocate" is one thing, writing official documentation, answering questions on forums, whatever — but "I ported a JavaScript app to Dart. Here's what I learned." Seriously? More like "I'm on the Dart Team. I ported a JavaScript app to Dart because it's my job."

Open source shouldn't need to be juiced with paid posts. If you scroll down to the "Lessons learned" section at the end, it really strikes to the core of what being disingenuous is all about.

supporting | 13 years ago | on: Making EmberJS Easier

> "More productive out of the box."

> "Write dramatically less code."

> "Absolutely right. Ember promises—and, we think, delivers—tremendous value."

No matter how often you say it, doesn't make it true. At a certain point, we have to stop just believing the hype at face value, and start actually evaluating what the piece of software really does with a critical perspective.

Aren't the same guys who are telling you that Ember is simple and easy to use and high-performance and well-designed and ambitious and removes boilerplate and cures cancer and kisses babies ... the same guys who were saying the same things about SproutCore two years ago?

http://web.archive.org/web/20110530004346/http://blog.sprout...

Isn't the data layer still totally unfinished? Didn't a lot of folks just get burned by wildly changing router APIs? Isn't it obvious from what few public production apps there are (after 2+ years) that the results end up sub-par, glitchy and wonky? Why would you want to spend time banging your head against the limitations and poor design choices of an over-marketed experimental framework?

Let them actually finish the damn thing first, then let's talk about "getting started" with it.

supporting | 13 years ago | on: Ember: Baby Steps

Right on. At a certain point, you have to stop just believing the hype at face value, and start actually evaluating what the piece of software really does with a critical perspective.

Aren't the same guys who are telling you that Ember is simple and easy to use and high-performance and well-designed and ambitious and removes boilerplate and cures cancer and kisses babies ... the same guys who were saying the same things about SproutCore two years ago?

http://web.archive.org/web/20110530004346/http://blog.sprout...

Isn't the data layer still totally unfinished? Didn't a lot of folks just get burned by wildly changing router APIs? Isn't it obvious from what few public production apps there are (after 2+ years) that the results end up sub-par, glitchy and wonky? Why would you want to spend time futzing around with an over-marketed research project?

Let them actually finish the project first, then let's talk about "getting started" with it.

page 1