We Are Pioneers: the Journey to Ember.js

I'm sorry but this is one of the most ridiculously vacuous, self-aggrandising pieces of nonsense I have ever seen submitted to HN. Even more so when it's just another framework, and not really even a particularly popular or revolutionary one. Pushing boundaries like travelling across the sea to an almost entirely unknown continent with little to no chance of return regardless of what you find there? Please. I think we need to stand back and take a deep breath.

Grandiosity aside, what&#x27;s pioneering about Ember.js? AngularJS, Backbone, Meteor and even Dojo and YUI I think all have better claims to being pioneers. As much as people hate Rails and the Rails community for having this attitude, at least Rails had that wow factor when it came out and there wasn&#x27;t really anything like it out there. Ember.js? What does Ember.js have right now that AngularJS or Knockout or Backbone or whatever didn&#x27;t have a year ago? AngularJS is both easier to get started with, offers much more flexibility and is much more interesting from a technical standpoint, not to mention that its feature set is much deeper.<p>This is like Apple&#x27;s marketing, except without the product and aimed at developers.

I started to notice a similar mindset between the groups of people who advocate for Rails and Ember.js. They tend to be more opinionated and very proud of the technology choice they made. I have nothing against it, it&#x27;s just intriguing.

Isn&#x27;t the text&#x27;s introduction slightly glorifiyng? It tells the story of the noble settlers who had to fight troubles and sometimes even lost their lives - it leaves out that they actually have slayn all the indigenous people whose country they invaded. Colonialization of North America isn&#x27;t just some exiting bunch of tales about adventurous pioneers, but actually a quite cruel story of suppression and murder. So maybe you should consider some other entry point for your text.

I think it&#x27;s important to rethink this progression a bit. In the early years of Rails, what else was around? What other Ruby-oriented frameworks did we find that did what Rails did? How many people were developing web-based MVC apps on a day-to-day basis in comparison to how many are developing them now? GitHub wasn&#x27;t even around until three years after Rails v1 - seems like maybe GitHub on its own will have untold effects on speeding up development time on a project like Ember.<p>Let&#x27;s consider also the simple fact that ALL client-side MVC frameworks are JavaScript (unless they are precompiler-based, which none of the big ones really are, currently). The fact that all of them are based on the same language, the massive cracks in server-side systems that are further exacerbated by language idiosyncrasies are reduced significantly.

<p><pre><code> &gt; I&#x27;ve seen [the problems that occur when you&#x27;re working &gt; with an immature ecosystem] before. I started with Rails &gt; in 2006. It was difficult in the earlier years. It has &gt; only really matured in the past 3 years. I think Rails &gt; 3.1 really embodies everything you need to make a &gt; certain class of web applications. Ember and its &gt; ecosystem are so far off. </code></pre> Using rails as our yardstick:<p><pre><code> Rails Releases Ember.js --------------------- -------------------------- 3.1.0 August 31, 2011 Now + 6.5 Years (End 2020) 3.0.0 August 29, 2010 Now + 5.5 Years (End 2019) 2.0.0 December 6, 2007 Now + 2 Years (Mid 2015) 1.0.0 December 13, 2005 Now (Mid 2013) </code></pre> So starting an Ember.js project today is like starting a Rails app in 2005. Probably too much headache to take on for six month to a year long projects, but if you&#x27;re looking at a 2-3 year timeframe and Ember.js gives you a technology advantage over other frameworks, then it might a good time to try it.

It probably felt right when he wrote it? Assuming some substances were abused. Terrible post... MVC is decades old, single page apps are getting old too; Doesn&#x27;t matter whether your view is called an Ember.View or not.

<i>yawn</i> good luck with that. I&#x27;m sure the settlers in their day would have moved onto something better if they had had the sense to recognize it at the time.

What sets Ember apart from Angular?

Nice , good luck for you , now only developers eventualy decide what&#x27;s best for them. If your framework is the best , people will adopt it.