Carsten Meier

• Frontend Developer at Peerigon
• Passion for Mobile & IoT
• Open Source Developer

• We do JavaScript
• Open Web!

Agenda

• What is Meteor about
• The Ecosystem
• The Past
• Common Misconceptions
• Why 1.3 rocks
• The Future

What is Meteor about

"The JavaScript App Platform"

It Really is a Platform!

Meteor makes stuff easy for you by abstraction

All it takes is a single command to install all of it!

curl https://install.meteor.com/ | sh

What? and How? (Full Stack / 1)

• Universal JavaScript WebApps

• Data exchange via DDP (Distributed Data Protocol) over WebSockets

  • Open protocol, keeps your data in sync
  • Supports Remote Procedure Calls (RPC)
  • Publish/subscribe model
  • Built-in latency compensation and conflict resolution

What? and How? (Full Stack / 2)

• Unified database API on server and client

  • MongoDB and MiniMongo

• State management by reactivity

  • If a data source changes, the affected code is rerun automattically
  • Works on client and server!

What? and How? (Toolchain)

• All goodies work out of the box
  • Babel, Uglify, NPM, bundling
  • HTTP server, automatic rebuild/reload
  • Cordova (1-click export for Android & iOS)

Now is that cool or what?

What can (or should) I use it for

• Highly interactive WebApps
• Rapid prototyping
• Mobile apps

The Meteor Ecosystem

Ecosystem

• Atmosphere.js

  • Package management (like NPM)

• Meteor Galaxy

  • Cloud hosting

Meteor: the past

or: the errors of our youth

Meteor: the past

Meteor tried to solve everything

Meteor: the past

The ecosystem could not keep up with the rest
(esp. NPM)

Meteor: the past

Development was not fast enough,
they got overrun by Babel, React & Webpack

Common Misconceptions

Common Misconceptions

• I can only integrate packages from Atmosphere.js
  • 1.3 brings NPM support via import

Common Misconceptions

• I need to use Blaze
  • You can use any frontend framework you want
  • Meteor integrates well with React, Angular, Vue

Common Misconceptions

• I cannot use Webpack

  • but you can!

Why 1.3 rocks

Why 1.3 rocks

• NPM support
• ES2015 with Babel out of the box (server & client)
  • Make sure to read the guide to modules

Why 1.3 rocks

• Better integration of popular frontend frameworks
• Build system is blazing fast again
• Still backwards compatible
• Full stack testing

Why 1.3 rocks

• It is still in the release phase (RC 5),
  watch out for bugs
• Watch the GitHub issues

DEMO TIME

Meteor: the future

Meteor: the future

• Upgrade from ancient Node.js to LTS-next (v6)
• package.json
• .meteorignore

Thank you

Carsten Meier
carsten.meier@peerigon.com