Echo JS 0.11.0

<~>
sylvainpv 2670 days ago. link parent -3 points
It's more likely that my boss pays me to produce good job and thought Angular will help me to this end because he has been influenced by the opposite of ranting, but equally subjective, non-constructive and harmful, which is MARKETING.

Do you know what is the last advice I received on my open source project ? "I think I'd avoid asking people to bug hunt, and instead just sell them something sexy. Just focus on getting people using it instead of being honest with them".

Replies

egauci 2670 days ago. link 5 points
Which is basically what I said. Your boss is paying you to use angular.
MaxArt 2670 days ago. link 2 points
I'm shaking my head here. You're missing the point.

The article is about non-costructive criticism, towards every software in general, but specifically OSS. There are people that do that on their spare time and don't get a dime for that. They keep on thanks to the moral support and active contribution of the community.

Even if you're somewhat "forced" to use Angular (you can always leave your job for greener pastures anyway - it's not like a good developer usually has a hard time finding a new position), you have to keep in mind that it's a framework that got and still gets a huge amount of work done. You should respect that and the choice of a lot of people that based their work on Angular and, overall, the efforts of all those who contributed.

There are a lot of reasons behind every choice that's ever made, and only because you're not seeing them you shouldn't dismiss them with something like "Pah! It's just MARKETING!"

Yes, Google pushed Angular a lot. But it's not like everything that Google pushed got the same amount of success, like Dart, or Chrome OS, or Google+. It had this success because a giant like Google is *committed* to the project, granting the mid-to-long term support which is needed in the business.

It also had its success because Angular has undeniable advantages, like being a complete framework for web applications, easily allowing things like dependency inversion and unit/e2e testing, and promoting good SOLID concepts.

In the end, ranting and bashing might relieve your spirit for a moment, but it doesn't get your job done and doesn't help solving your problems either. We're lucky enough to have a vast and responsive community around, so we can always rely on it if we pose ouselves in the right way.
ndks 2663 days ago. link 1 point
Don't forget Google Wave -shudders-
MaxArt 2663 days ago. link 1 point
Wave was a disaster in terms of presentation :) and now it's dead. The products I mentioned still exist.
sylvainpv 2670 days ago. link 1 point
You're missing my point too. I am an OS author/contributor myself and I know how valuable it is to have positive feedback and criticism. 

I know how it feels when people say your work is terrible, especially when these people are famous. It happened to me last Sunday : https://twitter.com/jensimmons/status/804737320104640512

Three weeks ago, I quit the RiotJS organisation to protest against the main contributor publicly shaming other open source maintainers on Twitter: https://github.com/riot/riot.github.io/issues/48#issuecomment-260127556

It matters a lot to me. But I guess because I respond to a comment in a Just Be Nice article, I became the bad guy and deserve my downvotes.

Let me try again: I only answered to this false idea that "no one forces you to use the framework". Yes, you can always quit your job, though it does not solve anything. Truth is there are few people lucky enough to pick the tools of their choice. Especially when talking about frameworks in big compagnies: these decisions are made at a very high level and rarely by the people who actually have to work with it every day. In my case, the decision to go with Angular 2 for all our future projects has been made months before the first beta release. At the time, there was no feedback, no prototype, only enthusiastic slides from Google promising miracles to come. How did we come to this decision, if not because of marketing ? 

Google recognized they made mistakes in the way they promoted Angular and communicated about its state of development. Companies have bet on it too early, and thousands of developers had to follow this chaotic path of 17 betas and 7 RC (which definitely were not RC). Of course, in a context of work pressure and stress, it leads to frustration and, at long, anger. Anger is the consequence, not the source of the problem. See how being overly positive in the beginning led us to being overly negative today ? That's why I don't think we should focus on being positive at all costs, but instead try to be less emotional about our tools and as always, practice critical thinking. Not every JS project has to be either "awesome" or "terrible".
misan 2662 days ago. link 1 point
Sylvain. I'm missing you at the riot project. Do you care to let us know more details what happened?
sylvainpv 2661 days ago. link 1 point
Well, there's not much more than what I said on github. I disapproved some tweets from @gianlucaguarini, tried to tell him but he reacted badly, so I made this move to disengage and make myself heard at the same time. If you want more details, we should discuss somewhere else.
blai 2670 days ago. link 1 point
Sure, we all need venting. After all, we are human. And yes, we need radical candor - how would we improve if we think we are perfect? But I guess the point of the article is that AT THE MOMENT we are having way too many negatives than we can handle as a community, just as you also pointed out yourself.

Google has not done the best they could in this matter, but we cannot dismiss they effort they have put in to fixing some of the most complained issues. It is hard to see developers like you suffer through the consequence of their fault, especially when you didn't get to pick... But wait, I think you can pick what you want to do in life. From the number of stars React project has on their github repository, I am sure there is no shortage of jobs out there asking for nothing but React. Not everyone is fanatic of particular frameworks, but if you are, and having to code Angular 2 make you lose sleep at night and your life suck because of it, then I am sure changing your job solved something - it brings your life back! Life should be happy, right?

By the way, thank you for your contribution to OS, you have all of my respect. And hey, if you just couldn't find companies that needs React dev, my company does :)
sylvainpv 2670 days ago. link 1 point
I think if I have to restart the project from scratch while sticking with Angular, I would be much more peaceful now that we have stable API, angular-cli and feedback on the tooling (webpack+rollup+typescript would be my new choice). It's more the timing and the process of decision-making that turns out badly for us. Emotions come when we start to lose control and feel stuck with something.