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I have no idea why Closure doesn't get more publicity. You never hear about it on Reddit/Slashdot/HN, but in the real world it's the foundation for virtually E

I have no idea why Closure doesn't get more publicity. You never hear about it on Reddit/Slashdot/HN, but in the real world it's the foundation for virtually EVERYTHING Google does on the client-side, save for a handful of things still using GWT. Like GWT... Closure has been around awhile, has gentle-to-nonexistant migration issues, and will be around for at least a decade to come. Unlike GWT, and virtually everything else Google does... Closure is pure JavaScript, rather than a trans-compiling mess that tries (and fails) to replace JavaScript. In client-side land, it's like there's inverse relationship between "blog chatter" and "real-world use in large projects". The tools that get all the attention are only used for personal tinkering, or by startups that mostly won't exist in a few years. Over the past several years, if something seems popular then that's a sign it's probably a children's toy for which you shouldn't stick your neck out within your company.

paulddraper 12y ago
Having used Closure Tools for a couple years, I often wonder that. But it lacks a lot of magic. It's based around reusability, maintainability, and performance, and not just features. Like you said, features get blogged, maintainability gets (silently) used.
aikah 12y ago
The closure-compiler is written in java. Here is your problem.
- paulddraper 12y ago
  It could be written in NodeJS, Haskell, or BF, but I doubt it would matter. I know a lot of JS developers that use Git, which is written in C.
  - aikah 12y ago
    > It could be written in NodeJS, Haskell, or BF, but I doubt it would matter. I know a lot of JS developers that use Git, which is written in C. Well git isnt a javascript compiler and git doesnt need the JVM to run.
- StevePerkins 12y ago
  If you don't mind my asking, what do you mean by this? If you're doing non-trivial client-side development, then you are probably already managing the details of your building/minification/testing through Grunt or something like it anyway. Does the issue boil down to, "Needing a Node.js installation on my laptop to do client-side development is fine... but having a JVM installed on my laptop sucks because ermahgerd-old-people-enterprise-uncool"?
  - aikah 12y ago
    Dont shoot the messenger,i'm just explaining you why the js community doesnt give a damn about all these closure tools written in java.
btown 12y ago
Well, Rails was talked about plenty back in the day (with its fair share of expletives), and it's proved to be anything but a children's toy. Regarding Closure and its libraries, my impressions are that it gives tremendous maintainability and structure when you have a large team and a long-term project, but there's still a lot of boilerplate when you need things like a simple data binding. Having searched around, I've found that Angular (1.2) provides a good balance between structured, easy-to-find-things code, and fewer keystrokes to iterate fast on features. I wish React were like that, but the lack of best practices in the Flux architecture makes it hard to know where to put things - I found I was constantly worrying about shooting myself in the foot when I made architectural decisions in React. I do think that Angular's going to get a Python-like version split, and it's refreshing that plenty of people are still writing Python 2 libraries... because I'm not leaving Angular 1.2 any time soon!
kylecordes 12y ago
I am also frustrated by the lack of broad interest in Closure. Partly because I am working in Clojure and ClojureScript, the latter of which relies on the Closure compiler for reasonably sized output and Closure libraries. Keeping the various spellings of the name right is a challenge, but it seems to work very well. Yet it is so far from the rest of the ecosystem. When you roam across some interesting JavaScript library online, there is basically a 0% chance that it does things the Closure way.
- paulddraper 12y ago
  Closure and Clojure...unfortunate naming conflict :P

paulddraper 12y ago

Having used Closure Tools for a couple years, I often wonder that. But it lacks a lot of magic. It's based around reusability, maintainability, and performance, and not just features. Like you said, features get blogged, maintainability gets (silently) used.

aikah 12y ago

The closure-compiler is written in java. Here is your problem.

paulddraper 12y ago
It could be written in NodeJS, Haskell, or BF, but I doubt it would matter. I know a lot of JS developers that use Git, which is written in C.
- aikah 12y ago
  > It could be written in NodeJS, Haskell, or BF, but I doubt it would matter. I know a lot of JS developers that use Git, which is written in C. Well git isnt a javascript compiler and git doesnt need the JVM to run.
StevePerkins 12y ago
If you don't mind my asking, what do you mean by this? If you're doing non-trivial client-side development, then you are probably already managing the details of your building/minification/testing through Grunt or something like it anyway. Does the issue boil down to, "Needing a Node.js installation on my laptop to do client-side development is fine... but having a JVM installed on my laptop sucks because ermahgerd-old-people-enterprise-uncool"?
- aikah 12y ago
  Dont shoot the messenger,i'm just explaining you why the js community doesnt give a damn about all these closure tools written in java.

btown 12y ago

Well, Rails was talked about plenty back in the day (with its fair share of expletives), and it's proved to be anything but a children's toy. Regarding Closure and its libraries, my impressions are that it gives tremendous maintainability and structure when you have a large team and a long-term project, but there's still a lot of boilerplate when you need things like a simple data binding. Having searched around, I've found that Angular (1.2) provides a good balance between structured, easy-to-find-things code, and fewer keystrokes to iterate fast on features. I wish React were like that, but the lack of best practices in the Flux architecture makes it hard to know where to put things - I found I was constantly worrying about shooting myself in the foot when I made architectural decisions in React. I do think that Angular's going to get a Python-like version split, and it's refreshing that plenty of people are still writing Python 2 libraries... because I'm not leaving Angular 1.2 any time soon!

kylecordes 12y ago

I am also frustrated by the lack of broad interest in Closure. Partly because I am working in Clojure and ClojureScript, the latter of which relies on the Closure compiler for reasonably sized output and Closure libraries. Keeping the various spellings of the name right is a challenge, but it seems to work very well. Yet it is so far from the rest of the ecosystem. When you roam across some interesting JavaScript library online, there is basically a 0% chance that it does things the Closure way.

paulddraper 12y ago
Closure and Clojure...unfortunate naming conflict :P