3 ms·

Build and Customize Your Own Hacker News, Reddit, or Product Hunt

51 points by mkaroumi 12y ago

justaaron 12y ago
not sure if telescope is a good boilerplate for meteor. I think it tends towards unnecessary abstraction complication and ends up rather brittle in the end. Try changing the post frequency from "daily", for example. The code complexity, in this case, making a previously non-existing abstraction (post frequency) difficult to alter... better to start with the basic meteor 3-file default app (or something similarly simple) and build one's app (and knowledge) from there... I'm a pretty experienced Meteor dev and I find telescope to be confusing...
- mkaroumi 12y ago
  Hmm... I understand. I've learned a lot using Telescope but I'm not an experienced developer, but what do I know?
- sgdesign 12y ago
  I'm really not sure what you're talking about. Do you have a specific example in code? Telescope is not the prettiest codebase in the world, but it uses relatively simple code. So I'm not sure which "unnecessary abstraction" you mean.
curiously 12y ago
great but I did not like the UI at all. it feels sluggish and too glamourized. Part of reason what makes HN discuss so great is the lack of any UI. no flat or glossy designs. Everythign is texty, so you focus on the text not the buttons or peoples avatars. Another minus is that its written in Meteor.
- ciwolsey 12y ago
  So you're easily distracted. Most people aren't. Is there something fundamentally wrong with Meteor I'm missing?
daliwali 12y ago
As a front-end developer, I cringed when I saw how much Telescope (or is it Meteor?) relies on global scope. To see what I mean, inspect the window object in their first example site http://crater.io/ http://crater.io/ Object.keys(window).filter(x => window[x] instanceof Function && !/native code/.test(window[x].toString())) 120 user-defined global functions, and that is not counting all global variables... yikes! (edit: if you're using Chrome, `Object.keys(window).length` gives you 260)
- sgdesign 12y ago
  That's a fair point, and definitely something that needs to be fixed. We've been slowly refactoring the app into a better, more modular structure but there's still a lot to do.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
mdotk 12y ago
Does anyone have any alternatives for this type of product (ie create your own reddit, hacker news, etc...)?
- Veratyr 12y ago
  Well there's Reddit: https://github.com/reddit/reddit https://github.com/reddit/reddit
- sgdesign 12y ago
  I listed a few here: http://www.telescopeapp.org/blog/telescope-vs/ http://www.telescopeapp.org/blog/telescope-vs/ As far as I know Telescope is the most active open-source project of this kind though.

51 points by mkaroumi 12y ago

not sure if telescope is a good boilerplate for meteor. I think it tends towards unnecessary abstraction complication and ends up rather brittle in the end. Try changing the post frequency from "daily", for example. The code complexity, in this case, making a previously non-existing abstraction (post frequency) difficult to alter... better to start with the basic meteor 3-file default app (or something similarly simple) and build one's app (and knowledge) from there... I'm a pretty experienced Meteor dev and I find telescope to be confusing...

mkaroumi 12y ago
Hmm... I understand. I've learned a lot using Telescope but I'm not an experienced developer, but what do I know?
sgdesign 12y ago
I'm really not sure what you're talking about. Do you have a specific example in code? Telescope is not the prettiest codebase in the world, but it uses relatively simple code. So I'm not sure which "unnecessary abstraction" you mean.

curiously 12y ago

great but I did not like the UI at all. it feels sluggish and too glamourized. Part of reason what makes HN discuss so great is the lack of any UI. no flat or glossy designs. Everythign is texty, so you focus on the text not the buttons or peoples avatars. Another minus is that its written in Meteor.

ciwolsey 12y ago
So you're easily distracted. Most people aren't. Is there something fundamentally wrong with Meteor I'm missing?

daliwali 12y ago

As a front-end developer, I cringed when I saw how much Telescope (or is it Meteor?) relies on global scope. To see what I mean, inspect the window object in their first example site http://crater.io/ http://crater.io/ Object.keys(window).filter(x => window[x] instanceof Function && !/native code/.test(window[x].toString())) 120 user-defined global functions, and that is not counting all global variables... yikes! (edit: if you're using Chrome, `Object.keys(window).length` gives you 260)

sgdesign 12y ago
That's a fair point, and definitely something that needs to be fixed. We've been slowly refactoring the app into a better, more modular structure but there's still a lot to do.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]

mdotk 12y ago

Does anyone have any alternatives for this type of product (ie create your own reddit, hacker news, etc...)?

Veratyr 12y ago
Well there's Reddit: https://github.com/reddit/reddit https://github.com/reddit/reddit
sgdesign 12y ago
I listed a few here: http://www.telescopeapp.org/blog/telescope-vs/ http://www.telescopeapp.org/blog/telescope-vs/ As far as I know Telescope is the most active open-source project of this kind though.