4 ms·

At first I thought "oh great, this looks very nice but why does it exist when Next.js, Gatsby, etc. are already a thing?" Then I saw Tom Preston-Werner's invol

At first I thought "oh great, this looks very nice but why does it exist when Next.js, Gatsby, etc. are already a thing?" Then I saw Tom Preston-Werner's involvement and my interest level raised considerably. I'm still not sure if there's a market for this per se, but the bone-fides of the dev team is certainly a good sign.

mojombo 7y ago
Thanks for the kind words! Redwood started as an experiment, and we'll see where it goes, but my intuition is that it will fill a need that many React developers currently have (namely: the lack of integrated solutions to all the technologies available in the ecosystem). It's certainly something that I want!
- tobr 7y ago
  How tightly is it tied to React? Would it make sense to try to use with another client side layer?
  - mojombo 7y ago
    Quite tightly at this point, as really nice integration is a primary goal. That said, it’s not impossible that another rendering layer could be used, but it’s not our focus right now.
    - freehunter 7y ago
      I appreciate the focus. React might not be everyone’s choice but what the JS world is missing is super tight integration between multiple tools. We forgot everything Rails taught us. People who want to pick their own technologies already have the ability to do so today, what’s missing is one off-the-shelf convention-over-configuration solution to be the Rails of JavaScript. Good luck to you guys.
  - bunsenhoneydew 7y ago
    This was my first thought too. I much prefer Vue so would love it if you could choose the client side layer. Not taking anything at all away from this, it looks awesome and I can’t wait to give it a try. I get that this is an opinionated framework and the effort to achieve multi client side options is likely pretty high. I’m also conscious that releasing something and have people say “I want it to be different” straight away is annoying so really trying not to be ‘that guy’. Knowing the js community, someone is probably already working on it anyway. Loving the innovation in this space!
rvz 7y ago
> Then I saw Tom Preston-Werner's involvement and my interest level raised considerably. I would have agreed with you already until I read the above sentence. Having a famous programmer isn't really a great reason or argument to adopt yet another N + 1 web frameworks. Sure, some have reasons to exist but appealing to authority is hardly any valid reason here. Even that aside, if everyone were to adopt this by the time it reaches v1.0, someone will complain via writing a Medium blog-post and introduce another web framework on top of Redwood or introduce some other improvement for Redwood but as a fork of the project rather than a contribution back to Redwood. Here we go again.
- AlchemistCamp 7y ago
  > appealing to authority is hardly any valid reason here It's about competence. Would you not have increased confidence in an NBA team after hearing Stephen Curry had joined it after the previous season? I think you'd be highly irrational not to.
  - dfee 7y ago
    For better or worse (or better in this case, I believe), I don’t know the famous dude. I won’t tell you my bonafides, either. If you’ve got someone with a particular skill set joining your project, that’s great that you’ve got strong, additional perspective in that domain. However, this isn’t a sixty minute game, and no one is getting paid millions to hit a game winning shot. This is open source software. I hope as an industry we learn to drop the theatrics and recognize our unique way of bringing value to whichever projects we contribute to.
    - AlchemistCamp 7y ago
      > This is open source software. Well, he made Gravatar, Jekyll, TOML and quite a few other open source things I've used. Accuse me of "theatrics" if you like, but I am in fact inclined to check out projects made by people who have made other things I like. I also read books written by people who have written other books I like. I watch movies with directors and actors from other movies I like, too! It's not a sure-fire guarantee I'll like the next thing but odds are considerably improved. Not updating my priors when learning of their involvement would be ridiculous.
joekrill 7y ago
> At first I thought "oh great, this looks very nice but why does it exist when Next.js, Gatsby, etc. are already a thing?" I honestly will never understand why people say things like this. As though there's no room for progress. As though there aren't alternatives that may or may not be better. Imagine if the folks building React thought "ya know, we got Angular, so why are we doing this?"... Or any of the many, many other similar scenarios. It's how we make progress.

mojombo 7y ago

Thanks for the kind words! Redwood started as an experiment, and we'll see where it goes, but my intuition is that it will fill a need that many React developers currently have (namely: the lack of integrated solutions to all the technologies available in the ecosystem). It's certainly something that I want!

tobr 7y ago
How tightly is it tied to React? Would it make sense to try to use with another client side layer?
- mojombo 7y ago
  Quite tightly at this point, as really nice integration is a primary goal. That said, it’s not impossible that another rendering layer could be used, but it’s not our focus right now.
  - freehunter 7y ago
    I appreciate the focus. React might not be everyone’s choice but what the JS world is missing is super tight integration between multiple tools. We forgot everything Rails taught us. People who want to pick their own technologies already have the ability to do so today, what’s missing is one off-the-shelf convention-over-configuration solution to be the Rails of JavaScript. Good luck to you guys.
- bunsenhoneydew 7y ago
  This was my first thought too. I much prefer Vue so would love it if you could choose the client side layer. Not taking anything at all away from this, it looks awesome and I can’t wait to give it a try. I get that this is an opinionated framework and the effort to achieve multi client side options is likely pretty high. I’m also conscious that releasing something and have people say “I want it to be different” straight away is annoying so really trying not to be ‘that guy’. Knowing the js community, someone is probably already working on it anyway. Loving the innovation in this space!

rvz 7y ago

> Then I saw Tom Preston-Werner's involvement and my interest level raised considerably. I would have agreed with you already until I read the above sentence. Having a famous programmer isn't really a great reason or argument to adopt yet another N + 1 web frameworks. Sure, some have reasons to exist but appealing to authority is hardly any valid reason here. Even that aside, if everyone were to adopt this by the time it reaches v1.0, someone will complain via writing a Medium blog-post and introduce another web framework on top of Redwood or introduce some other improvement for Redwood but as a fork of the project rather than a contribution back to Redwood. Here we go again.

AlchemistCamp 7y ago
> appealing to authority is hardly any valid reason here It's about competence. Would you not have increased confidence in an NBA team after hearing Stephen Curry had joined it after the previous season? I think you'd be highly irrational not to.
- dfee 7y ago
  For better or worse (or better in this case, I believe), I don’t know the famous dude. I won’t tell you my bonafides, either. If you’ve got someone with a particular skill set joining your project, that’s great that you’ve got strong, additional perspective in that domain. However, this isn’t a sixty minute game, and no one is getting paid millions to hit a game winning shot. This is open source software. I hope as an industry we learn to drop the theatrics and recognize our unique way of bringing value to whichever projects we contribute to.
  - AlchemistCamp 7y ago
    > This is open source software. Well, he made Gravatar, Jekyll, TOML and quite a few other open source things I've used. Accuse me of "theatrics" if you like, but I am in fact inclined to check out projects made by people who have made other things I like. I also read books written by people who have written other books I like. I watch movies with directors and actors from other movies I like, too! It's not a sure-fire guarantee I'll like the next thing but odds are considerably improved. Not updating my priors when learning of their involvement would be ridiculous.

joekrill 7y ago

> At first I thought "oh great, this looks very nice but why does it exist when Next.js, Gatsby, etc. are already a thing?" I honestly will never understand why people say things like this. As though there's no room for progress. As though there aren't alternatives that may or may not be better. Imagine if the folks building React thought "ya know, we got Angular, so why are we doing this?"... Or any of the many, many other similar scenarios. It's how we make progress.