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So, isn't it time we had another Angular vs Ember discussion? I tried Ember some time ago and it just didn't click for me. It's hard to explain exactly why, bu

So, isn't it time we had another Angular vs Ember discussion? I tried Ember some time ago and it just didn't click for me. It's hard to explain exactly why, but I found myself switching between too many files to get simple things done. I've done some simple Angular work recently, and found it a relatively simple system. In defence of Ember everything about the project -- docs, community -- seems to be better organised than Angular. The Angular docs are hilariously bad.

sambeau 13y ago
How about we all try them first?
- noelwelsh 13y ago
  Well, one reason to get others' opinions to avoid having to try everything oneself. Time is limited.
  - sambeau 13y ago
    Well, yes. I was more hoping those that have a strong opinion on one or the other would ensure that they try them both first.
- jonahx 13y ago
  While this attitude is in-line with general hacker values, and is good advice when dealing with simple tools, it is a poor general principle when applied to complex tools with an ecosystem of experts whose opinions you trust. In the case at hand, spending half a day each (or even more) with angular and ember is not enough time to gain a truly informed opinion of either. These are big frameworks with many features, and each harbors both gotchas and benefits that won't emerge until you've worked with them over time in real projects. For developers with limited time, asking advice from fellow trusted developers is not only acceptable, but also, in many cases, the clearly optimal strategy. Of course, the trick is to find experienced people to ask with tastes and values similar to your own.
  - mgkimsal 13y ago
    Unless those trusted developers are also experts in both, you're back to square one.
erikpukinskis 13y ago
I've been working in Ember full time now for a few months, and I really advocate using just two files, at least to start: one for Javascript and one for HTML. I know, it's a terrible, horrible practice, but hear me out. Learning Ember, especially at the beginning, required me to sort of rewire my brain about what goes where. It's "MVC", but the M, V, and C mean totally different things than they mean in Rails. Really it's more like MVCRT (model view controller route template). I found all the different files extremely confusing at first, especially since each tutorial told you to lay things out slightly differently. If you put it all in one file though, you can really easily move stuff around. You'll find yourself frequently pulling stuff out of a controller and sticking it in a view, or a route. Having to constantly switch files, remember where things are, create new files, and remove stuff from version control really puts a damper on things. My advice to anyone starting with Ember: download the starter kit from emberjs.com and try to stick inside that as long as you can. You can just drop it into your Rails /public folder and get up and running. Once you have a solid understanding of the architecture, and your app is getting bigger, it's literally an hour's work to pull everything out into separate files and drop it into something like the Rails asset system.
- iamstef 13y ago
  Although lots of work still needs to be done. http://github.com/stefanpenner/ember-app-kit http://github.com/stefanpenner/ember-app-kit aims to prevent and mitigate the tooling pain, by having the community bear the burden.
- zwily 13y ago
  I wrote the first ~25% of my first few Ember apps completely in jsbin. The ease of starting and sharing what I'd done with others was great.
digitalzombie 13y ago
Ember doc as of last week was base on RC3 or something while I was using RC7. Wtf. I followed the tutorial with RC3 and some emberdata version that was included in the tutorial. Switch to RC7 everything break. The error response was gibberish, had to stack trace it, to find out I need to switch emberdata to the newest version. I don't get why people keep on saying AngularJS doc is bad. Maybe I'm weird but I've found Ember JS to be horrible and AngularJS to be very good.

sambeau 13y ago

How about we all try them first?

noelwelsh 13y ago
Well, one reason to get others' opinions to avoid having to try everything oneself. Time is limited.
- sambeau 13y ago
  Well, yes. I was more hoping those that have a strong opinion on one or the other would ensure that they try them both first.
jonahx 13y ago
While this attitude is in-line with general hacker values, and is good advice when dealing with simple tools, it is a poor general principle when applied to complex tools with an ecosystem of experts whose opinions you trust. In the case at hand, spending half a day each (or even more) with angular and ember is not enough time to gain a truly informed opinion of either. These are big frameworks with many features, and each harbors both gotchas and benefits that won't emerge until you've worked with them over time in real projects. For developers with limited time, asking advice from fellow trusted developers is not only acceptable, but also, in many cases, the clearly optimal strategy. Of course, the trick is to find experienced people to ask with tastes and values similar to your own.
- mgkimsal 13y ago
  Unless those trusted developers are also experts in both, you're back to square one.

erikpukinskis 13y ago

I've been working in Ember full time now for a few months, and I really advocate using just two files, at least to start: one for Javascript and one for HTML. I know, it's a terrible, horrible practice, but hear me out. Learning Ember, especially at the beginning, required me to sort of rewire my brain about what goes where. It's "MVC", but the M, V, and C mean totally different things than they mean in Rails. Really it's more like MVCRT (model view controller route template). I found all the different files extremely confusing at first, especially since each tutorial told you to lay things out slightly differently. If you put it all in one file though, you can really easily move stuff around. You'll find yourself frequently pulling stuff out of a controller and sticking it in a view, or a route. Having to constantly switch files, remember where things are, create new files, and remove stuff from version control really puts a damper on things. My advice to anyone starting with Ember: download the starter kit from emberjs.com and try to stick inside that as long as you can. You can just drop it into your Rails /public folder and get up and running. Once you have a solid understanding of the architecture, and your app is getting bigger, it's literally an hour's work to pull everything out into separate files and drop it into something like the Rails asset system.

iamstef 13y ago
Although lots of work still needs to be done. http://github.com/stefanpenner/ember-app-kit http://github.com/stefanpenner/ember-app-kit aims to prevent and mitigate the tooling pain, by having the community bear the burden.
zwily 13y ago
I wrote the first ~25% of my first few Ember apps completely in jsbin. The ease of starting and sharing what I'd done with others was great.

digitalzombie 13y ago

Ember doc as of last week was base on RC3 or something while I was using RC7. Wtf. I followed the tutorial with RC3 and some emberdata version that was included in the tutorial. Switch to RC7 everything break. The error response was gibberish, had to stack trace it, to find out I need to switch emberdata to the newest version. I don't get why people keep on saying AngularJS doc is bad. Maybe I'm weird but I've found Ember JS to be horrible and AngularJS to be very good.