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The point was more about popularity having no correlation with anything else. There is tons of unpopular code that is really, really good, these are hidden gems

The point was more about popularity having no correlation with anything else. There is tons of unpopular code that is really, really good, these are hidden gems. Likewise, there is popular code that is quite bad or mediocre regardless of number of contributors. To rephrase: PHP is the most widely used server-side scripting language on the web. That does not make it good.

seanwilson 9y ago
> Likewise, there is popular code that is quite bad or mediocre regardless of number of contributors. Like what? If you're looking for a JavaScript library for example, you can't really go wrong picking one that has many contributors, an active issue tracker, thousands of stars, lots of forks etc. Unless it's some core part of your stack, I don't see how it's practical to spend a lot of time hunting down super well implemented libraries that aren't likely to be supported in the future because nobody uses them. > To rephrase: PHP is the most widely used server-side scripting language on the web. That does not make it good. I'm not a huge fan of PHP but you can still write good software in it. Libraries are relatively easy to swap out compared to say operating systems and programming languages. Personally I find many of the best libraries tend to be the most popular ones.
- daliwali 9y ago
  I have a rather unpopular opinion that JS libraries get popular for reasons unrelated to merit, such as corporate backing (React), appeal to beginners (jQuery), and adding syntax sugar that has no value to end-users (Underscore/Lodash, Babel). They are symptomatic of organizational problems related to herding programmers at scale. To beat the average, by definition you can't just do what everyone else is doing and expect outstanding results. If your problem is unique there won't be a library for it. If you find or create a hidden gem, it's your secret weapon, you are its user and responsible for it.
  - seanwilson 9y ago
    I use React, jQuery, Lodash and Babel and think they're great projects. What equivalent projects would you replace them with? What are you using that you consider a secret weapon? Going back to my original comment, I don't understand how you can pick these libraries as examples of things you should avoid if you read the source code.

seanwilson 9y ago

> Likewise, there is popular code that is quite bad or mediocre regardless of number of contributors. Like what? If you're looking for a JavaScript library for example, you can't really go wrong picking one that has many contributors, an active issue tracker, thousands of stars, lots of forks etc. Unless it's some core part of your stack, I don't see how it's practical to spend a lot of time hunting down super well implemented libraries that aren't likely to be supported in the future because nobody uses them. > To rephrase: PHP is the most widely used server-side scripting language on the web. That does not make it good. I'm not a huge fan of PHP but you can still write good software in it. Libraries are relatively easy to swap out compared to say operating systems and programming languages. Personally I find many of the best libraries tend to be the most popular ones.

daliwali 9y ago
I have a rather unpopular opinion that JS libraries get popular for reasons unrelated to merit, such as corporate backing (React), appeal to beginners (jQuery), and adding syntax sugar that has no value to end-users (Underscore/Lodash, Babel). They are symptomatic of organizational problems related to herding programmers at scale. To beat the average, by definition you can't just do what everyone else is doing and expect outstanding results. If your problem is unique there won't be a library for it. If you find or create a hidden gem, it's your secret weapon, you are its user and responsible for it.
- seanwilson 9y ago
  I use React, jQuery, Lodash and Babel and think they're great projects. What equivalent projects would you replace them with? What are you using that you consider a secret weapon? Going back to my original comment, I don't understand how you can pick these libraries as examples of things you should avoid if you read the source code.