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by sergiotapia·13y ago·view on hn ↗
I'm still incredibly confused as to what Meteor actually _is_?

Is it a javascript framework (think, a js framework)?

Is it an MVC framework (think CakePHP, Ruby on Rails) that happens to use Javascript for the language?

Is it something I can host anywhere or only on Meteor servers?

The demo is neat, I get that - but what is it?

2 comments
Is it a javascript framework (think, a js framework)?

Yes.

Is it an MVC framework (think CakePHP, Ruby on Rails) that happens to use Javascript for the language?

Doesn't quite follow the MVC pattern but I would put meteor on par with Ruby On Rails.

Is it something I can host anywhere or only on Meteor servers?

Yes. You can host it on your server. It isn't well documented or supported(to me), however.

The demo is neat, I get that - but what is it?

I am not sure what you're trying to ask here.

Eh, it's pretty easy to host it on your own server. Just run "meteor bundle myapp.tar.gz", extract the .tar.gz on your server, run "node main.js". It's documented on "meteor help".
Ok so this post confused me even more. So it's not a "meteor app" it's a node js app that happens to use Meteor?
It's a full stack framework. Node js backend, choice of db extensions (starts with redis I believe), and js front end.

Runs on handlebars.

For someone like me, who's used to the standard LAMP stack and hasn't played with Node, any of the js frameworks, redis, or handlebars, it took a few days to get acquainted, but once I did I really enjoyed using it.

Again, a little too much magic, which makes me feel like my code is weak.

I wouldn't really put it like that, but sure. You really aren't exposed to node.js at all except for when you bundle up the app to run it on your server. It's a framework that happens to use node.js, a particular mongo library, a particular templating library, a particular library for http requests, etc. (Of course, a lot of those libraries can be disabled, swapped out, etc.)
And I have some initial problem figuring out how to set up anyway.
It's not MVC, it is MVVM.
What I've come to understand is it's a stack (it uses mongoDB and something called "mini Mongo" and the front end uses a templating system called handlebars) that takes advantage of Javascript async nature allowing for the creation of applications that otherwise would be considered "AJAX"ish but within meteor these are just "normal" and don't require AJAX code, hence why it's unique. It isn't MVC it's "MVVM" as JPKab mentioned