Hey all,

At my company, I recently gave a short presentation on Meteor.js. As you've gathered from the title, Meteor.js is a full-stack Javascript-only web and mobile application framework. Meteor is incredibly quick to get up and running. In just about 5 lines of code, you can have your app running locally (on Windows too!). I've fallen in love with Meteor and while I am by no means an expert (or even a journeyman), I have found a bunch of great resources along the way. I figured I'd post here for anyone else who might be interested in checking out what I think could be the definitive JS framework.

Fortunately, the Meteor.js documentation and tutorial is fantastic. The tutorial is your basic run of the mill to-do list app, but highlights some of Meteor's great features, most notably the reactive UI (made possible by its UI library, Blaze, which is similar to React, Angular, or Knockout). In addition, you'll catch a quick introduction to MongoDB.

After tooling around with the to-do app, you might find yourself wondering, where do I go from here? If you've fallen in love like I did and are willing to drop $30 on an excellent book, check out Discover Meteor, which is consistently updated and a fantastic companion for any curious developer.

One of the things that intimidated me about Meteor initially was its lack of structure. Fortunately, through Meteor's package manager (available to view online at Atmospherejs.com you can get set up with a number of project scaffolding tools.

The first tool is maintained by Evented Mind, the same group that published the Discover Meteor book I referenced above. The tool, iron-cli, scaffolds out your app and provides some boilerplate code to get started. Iron CLI seems more suited for legitimate applications, so if you're looking to build your own site, this might not be the option for you.

Fortunately, Meteor Kitchen has you covered. This scaffolding tool gives you a little more out of the box, including the latest Bootstrap theme and a number of example apps to build off, including code and data for account management and even photo sharing.

In closing, if you're a novice JS developer (or even consider 'jQuery developer' a more apt title), check out Meteor. You'll be surprised with what you can build!

Hey all,

First, I love the site already. It feels modern and has a lot of great features. I'm curious though, what can Snapzu do, or what has it done already, to avoid the same problems reddit had?

I was originally a user of Digg. When the site imploded, I moved to reddit along with everyone else. Digg failed because it didn't listen to its community, and now reddit is dealing with the same thing. But this time, circumstances are a bit different. The majority of users are like goldfish. I myself checked reddit this morning only because I literally didn't know what to do with myself on the internet otherwise. I think a lot of people feel similarly. They're looking for a fix that cannot be provided elsewhere yet, and so we inevitably return to the dark master. The reddit userbase is pretty massive, ensuring a constant stream of new content. We've grown accustomed to content being delivered like an IV directly into our blood stream. We've gotten lazy. And addicted.

Reddit won't fail like Digg did. Even this latest and largest (no pun intended) controversy probably had an insignificant effect on reddit as a whole. They're still the biggest kid on the block. Which is both a blessing and a curse in my opinion.

We shouldn't be looking to just post original content on any reddit alternative. It's almost impossible to do. Cross-posts from reddit should be encouraged within reason.

Toxic communities are dangerous. They expose the site to the outside world in a negative way, and might even encourage more of that behavior. How do we solve for this? We're all about free speech, but witch-hunts and brigading can have real consequences. Where is the line drawn?

Anyway, sorry for all the text. Just thinking aloud at 8:30 AM. Good morning east coast!