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Meteor Aims to Make Javascript Programming Fun Again


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Release 1.0 of the Meteor open source JavaScript platform is expected to be released early next year.

Credit: Getty

The Meteor open source JavaScript platform, released in 2012 with the goal of streamlining Web application development, is moving toward its 1.0 release in early 2014, says Meteor Development Group's Matt Debergalis.

Debergalis, who co-wrote Meteor, says the program is designed to simplify Web programming to make it more fun and inclusive for a wider range of programmers. He notes that Meteor's developers were motivated by a move toward thick client applications, in which most of the code runs within the Web browser rather than in a data center, resulting in programs that are more interactive and engaging. Because of this shift, Meteor offers a live page updates feature that enables developers to write templates that automatically update when the database changes.

Debergalis says older frameworks such as PHP and Rails were designed to send one page at a time from development to the browser, and lack the infrastructure to create today's interactive apps.

Meteor also includes a real-time wire protocol called Distributed Data Protocol that, unlike HTTP, allows the server to publish data into the client to provide continuous information updates.

From InfoWorld
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