[p2pu-dev] Tech call notes: 2013-01-17

Tue Feb 5 20:08:15 UTC 2013

Angular seems like the new hawtness lately. The only thing I'd caution when
selecting a client-side MVC framework: has anyone written about writing
large-ish apps in them? Having the benefit of others' experiences and being
able to predict complications is a huge asset with things like this :)

Chris, happy to join any chats about architecture. Feel free to email me
separately if you want to set up a Skype chat or Hangout or whatever.

-P

On Mon, Feb 4, 2013 at 7:13 AM, Jos Flores <josmasflores at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hey Chris,
>
> thanks for sharing the doc and the link; mad busy for the last week
> but will have a look at them sometime this week.
>
> The main thing I like about AngularJS is that you don't have to worry
> (almost) about DOM manipulation, it does it all for you. So the
> typical cycle of using jQuery with a selector and add listeners, or
> trigger functions and so on, is almost gone. Angular does all that for
> you as long as you 'mark' the element with an angular attribute. Some
> people don't like those made up HTML tags, and I have to say I didn't
> at first either, but I believe now that the benefits outweigh the
> ugliness of the tags.
> Another really important thing is that all your JS is injected, so you
> write it in modules and inject it into the controllers that need to
> use it. All your JS code is super testable, as your modules are
> completely decoupled, and that is huge!
> The Angular team are really big into testing, and they know how to do
> it. I've been following Misko Hevery's blog since his Java days, and
> he's an awesome developer (http://misko.hevery.com/).
>
> Having said that, I've never worked in a big app, and I'm sure at some
> point you are gonna need to select particular elements and do
> something with them, jQuery style... but can't really tell with my
> little experience.
>
> I am not very familiar with different templates, to be honest; when I
> was playing with backbone I used the default ones, I believe they are
> underscore's and not backbone's, and Angular ships their own; so not
> familiar with other libraries.
>
> cheers,
> José
>
>
>
> On 25 January 2013 01:14, Chris Ewald <chris at p2pu.org> wrote:
> > Thanks for tip Paul. Jinja2 does look a bunch nicer than the defaults.
> >
> > Would love to get your input on basic architecture for the new MOOC Maker
> > app we're building sometime soon. We're going to be in the thick of the
> > design probably in early february so chatting architecture sometime
> around
> > then would be most appreciated. :-)
> >
> > Cheers
> >
> >
> > On Thu, Jan 24, 2013 at 5:17 PM, Paul Osman <paul at eval.ca> wrote:
> >>
> >> Just chiming in with a quick FYI re: templates.
> >>
> >> It's possible to use Jinja2 with Django instead of the default Django
> >> template engine (which I agree, is horrible). Have a look and see if
> any of
> >> you prefer it:
> >>
> >> http://jinja.pocoo.org/docs/
> >>
> >> There are certain trade-offs with going with anything other than the
> >> default Django templates, especially around using 3rd party apps that
> >> package templates, but worth a look.
> >>
> >> -P
> >>
> >>
> >> On Wed, Jan 23, 2013 at 11:24 PM, Chris Ewald <chris at p2pu.org> wrote:
> >>>
> >>> @Dirk - so there's a few reasons why I don't like the django templating
> >>> layer. First off, I am spoiled with erb which lets you use the full
> ruby
> >>> language in the templates. I think that using a full language rather
> than
> >>> tags or whatever is usually preferable - it's more powerful and is one
> less
> >>> del to learn. The downside is that they usually a little more verbose.
> On
> >>> the JS side, I know that ejs and eco work similarly, giving you full
> JS in
> >>> your templates, so my preference is for that as opposed to mustache or
> >>> handlebars. The filters is what really bug me with the django
> templates. I
> >>> don't really like the syntax for them and it feels to me like a
> hodgepodge
> >>> of theoretically useful functions in a global context... it's
> approaching
> >>> PHP style which is really bad IMHO. I don't know all of the filters,
> so I'm
> >>> never really sure if I should do string manipulations in the controller
> >>> function or with a filter. It's also not straightforward how you
> define and
> >>> use your own filters - to me at least, maybe this is not true. All of
> this
> >>> is a non-issue if you are using a full programming language in your
> >>> templates where you can create and use non-global (even OO - yay!)
> functions
> >>> the same way as the rest of the language.
> >>>
> >>> I'm not attached to ejs in any way really, but I do think it makes
> sense
> >>> to do the view layer of this app in JS. As we mentioned - the big
> advantage
> >>> of using a JS view layer is that they all speak JSON, so we wouldn't
> need to
> >>> change anything from our REST API. Freebie!
> >>>
> >>> @José - I shared with you the original grant proposal for the MOOC
> Maker.
> >>> Check it out, but read it skeptically. It's the super long term
> version -
> >>> right now we want to make each MOOC it's own instance so we can learn
> from
> >>> the experience of running different MOOCs. Really right now, all we
> want is
> >>> to recreate what we currently have in ruby in python and add an email
> >>> scheduler. The app described in the proposal is pretty big and would
> >>> definitely be a django app.
> >>>
> >>> As for JS MVC frameworks - I have experience with backbone and JSMVC.
> >>> Definitely prefer backbone. JSMVC is huge, complex, and obtrusive with
> way
> >>> too many moving parts to understand it all. Definitely do not
> recommend it.
> >>> Backbone is the polar opposite - the bare minimum you need to get a
> MVC up
> >>> and running. And it's dependency underscore.js is really nice too -
> >>> basically a very well thought out core lib extension. I was up and
> running
> >>> with backbone in 1 day. The code is really easy - but the hardest part
> is
> >>> the way of thinking with it - where a 'view' is always associated with
> a DOM
> >>> element and a Collection is basically an array stack of those views,
> with a
> >>> bunch of callbacks for adding / removing them. Backbone also has a
> biggest
> >>> user base / community of the JS MVCs by a large margin so that's a
> really
> >>> good sign IMHO.
> >>>
> >>> I haven't played around with AngularJS at all. How do you like it? I
> >>> think it's also pretty lightweight? Also, do you have an opinion of JS
> >>> templating projects that you like / dislike?
> >>>
> >>> Also, I did some quick googling of flask. Check this out:
> >>> http://www.mikkolehtinen.com/blog/2012/05/25/rewindy-tech-stack/
> >>> Apparently our line of reasoning is not original. Let me know what you
> >>> think.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> On Wed, Jan 23, 2013 at 8:36 AM, Dirk Uys <dirk at p2pu.org> wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>> Hi Jose
> >>>>
> >>>> On Tue, Jan 22, 2013 at 7:28 PM, Jos Flores <josmasflores at gmail.com>
> >>>> wrote:
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>> If all your business logic is encapsulated in classes, your domain
> >>>>> objects will be usable by both Django and flask, and being plain
> >>>>> objects, can be very testable. But anyway, this is pretty much the
> >>>>> same you are saying! :)
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> I tend to agree with you on this. I prefer writing domain logic
> behind a
> >>>> stateless API that answers questions. Anything behind your API is
> free to
> >>>> use any data store. Resources should be referenced by URI and you
> have the
> >>>> possibility of weak references. Exposing an APIs over HTTP follows
> easily.
> >>>>
> >>>> Cheers
> >>>> d
> >>>>
> >>>> _______________________________________________
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> >>>>
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