Was Meteor hard to learn? Yes. Did I spend many hours (days) doing Digits? Yes. Did I go through the seven stages of grief? Yes. Would I do it again? Absolutely.
My philosophy on learning is that it’s a process. When you get frustrated while learning something, it means you’re really trying to learn something new and you’re pushing yourself. When I got frustrated with my digits application not running perfectly or even my final project mock up (which was late), I reminded myself that this is part of the process. More importantly, fall in love with the process, the ups and the downs.
To be honest, everything about meteor is difficult, had it not been for the screencasts, I would’ve never put the time into learning it. It’s difficult because it’s completely foreign to me as well as the fact that I’m still on my training wheels for Javascript, HTML, and CSS. I’ve never made an app and I didn’t know how to make one until now, But now I WANT to make apps. I want to learn more Meteor and more about the languages with it. My only regret is not knowing enough about Meteor earlier to utilize it in the recent AT&T Hackathon. Now I want to invest time into this framework so that I can eventually produce something of value with it or even make a great app at the next hackathon.
The design of meteor is very fascinating to someone who just recently learned the fundamentals of networks. A subscription based client/server architecture makes me want to figure out why they chose that over the traditional architecture. What I really like about Meteor is the way you organize your files in the application. Separating code to be on the client or server helps to alleviate headaches and confusion in the long run. Compartmentalizing code like that is aesthetic and helps you spend less time asking “What’s going on?” and more time on “What kind of app do I want to make?” Yes, imports will be the death of me, but you can’t live without them right? I look forward to a future with meteor, until death do us part. I’d like to part ways by describing my relationship with Meteor with Manfred Mann’s line, “Momma told me not to look into the eyes of the sun. But Momma, that’s where the fun is.”