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37 Signals has adopted some of these ideas. Would their apps qualify as "big" for you?

ativzzz 3y ago
To be fair, 37 Signals (Basecamp) which is behind ruby on rails, changes their front end philosophy with every new major version of rails And to be fairer, it's generally a pretty good philosophy for greenfield apps at that particular point in time, but if I started an app on rails 4 or 5 there's no way I'm updating my front end every time they change their minds about how front end should work They believe this now, in 4-5 years it'll be XYZ next thing
- mekoka 3y ago
  People buy into ideas and once they've paid the price, they dislike when that investment is challenged with new information. The resistance that I see in these thread to the idea that going back to HTML might be enough, to me looks very much like that. Basecamp (formerly 37signals) has a track record of challenging the status quo, whether in business or engineering practices and to actually be fair, they're not changing their front-end philosophy on a whim or to simply follow a fad. They're trying to solve real problems. In the past, their flagship product served as proof that exposed many established counter-advices as merely baseless beliefs. Over the years, they've demonstrated how many "bad ideas" could actually work better for you, once you allow yourself to become a bit more pragmatic. They might not be BIG, but they're also not small. Imo, what they say and do engineering-wise tends to matter much more to average developers than what Facebook or Google might recommend. I think the question stands, is Basecamp a good enough example?
- jasonwatkinspdx 3y ago
  I think this is a rational strategy. They aren't changing concepts just randomly for that alone. As we learn problems with the last approach we try something new to address it. If you're starting a new app green field this is an ideal time to try to shed some baggage.
- firecall 3y ago
  I wouldn’t say they’ve exactly changed their philosophy. To me it seems more like they’ve evolved it. From Rails UJS using jQuery, to vanilla Js, then TurboLinks and onto today’s tools like Turbo and Stimulus. The evolution isn’t a bad thing, and the older approaches still work in modern rails. They’ve changed and updates the build tools, but then you have to keep up. They went from Sprockets, to Webpacker, and then module loading to replace Webpacker. So they’ve haven’t changed philosophy as such, it’s just considered and measure evolution and refinement. Feels that way in practice to me anyway! :-)
aniforprez 3y ago
It's been a while since I used it but I did a limited trial of Hey and it was genuinely miserable to use. Not only did everything take a few ms extra, the entire interface was so incredibly janky and had no accessibility concerns at all. They were shipping their website to their mobile apps and it was horrid. I would not put Hey as a shining example anywhere for this philosophy It's been a long time since I used Basecamp but that was decent enough

To be fair, 37 Signals (Basecamp) which is behind ruby on rails, changes their front end philosophy with every new major version of rails And to be fairer, it's generally a pretty good philosophy for greenfield apps at that particular point in time, but if I started an app on rails 4 or 5 there's no way I'm updating my front end every time they change their minds about how front end should work They believe this now, in 4-5 years it'll be XYZ next thing

mekoka 3y ago
People buy into ideas and once they've paid the price, they dislike when that investment is challenged with new information. The resistance that I see in these thread to the idea that going back to HTML might be enough, to me looks very much like that. Basecamp (formerly 37signals) has a track record of challenging the status quo, whether in business or engineering practices and to actually be fair, they're not changing their front-end philosophy on a whim or to simply follow a fad. They're trying to solve real problems. In the past, their flagship product served as proof that exposed many established counter-advices as merely baseless beliefs. Over the years, they've demonstrated how many "bad ideas" could actually work better for you, once you allow yourself to become a bit more pragmatic. They might not be BIG, but they're also not small. Imo, what they say and do engineering-wise tends to matter much more to average developers than what Facebook or Google might recommend. I think the question stands, is Basecamp a good enough example?
jasonwatkinspdx 3y ago
I think this is a rational strategy. They aren't changing concepts just randomly for that alone. As we learn problems with the last approach we try something new to address it. If you're starting a new app green field this is an ideal time to try to shed some baggage.
firecall 3y ago
I wouldn’t say they’ve exactly changed their philosophy. To me it seems more like they’ve evolved it. From Rails UJS using jQuery, to vanilla Js, then TurboLinks and onto today’s tools like Turbo and Stimulus. The evolution isn’t a bad thing, and the older approaches still work in modern rails. They’ve changed and updates the build tools, but then you have to keep up. They went from Sprockets, to Webpacker, and then module loading to replace Webpacker. So they’ve haven’t changed philosophy as such, it’s just considered and measure evolution and refinement. Feels that way in practice to me anyway! :-)

aniforprez 3y ago

It's been a while since I used it but I did a limited trial of Hey and it was genuinely miserable to use. Not only did everything take a few ms extra, the entire interface was so incredibly janky and had no accessibility concerns at all. They were shipping their website to their mobile apps and it was horrid. I would not put Hey as a shining example anywhere for this philosophy It's been a long time since I used Basecamp but that was decent enough