Hi Nick, I'm a fellow developer, not part of the Polymer team. My first foray into a production web app involved applets. Glad we've moved on :-)
But I don't think applets fell out of favor because they used classes. That was the one aspect I've missed all these years, until recently. They were problematic in terms of performance, being confined to a rectangle, blurry printing, needing to compile a complex, proprietary language when JavaScript could do the same thing almost as fast, with a much lower learning curve, etc. And just not being "of the web" in the best sense, but controlled by one vendor (who famously went after another vendor for daring to ship their own version of it). Most functional languages including F#, Scala, Haskell have classes. Nothing is forcing you to make your classes have mutable members. I've seen examples of custom elements built with Elm <https://github.com/lukewestby/elm-custom-element-demo/blob/master/index.html>, for example. You might also look at SkateJS, if you have a strong aversion to OOP. On Friday, May 26, 2017 at 4:08:20 PM UTC-4, Nick Pavlica wrote: > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > *All, After watching multiple presentations from Google I/O 2017 on > Polymer 2, I was struck with an oppositional view of the “adopt the > platform” mantra that the presenters were espousing. While reflecting on > this reaction for a couple of days, I couldn’t help but reminisce of days > gone buy in this industry. It feels as though we keep reinventing the same > wheel, and expecting a different result. For those of us that have been > around long enough, we remember the failures of the past, and why they > failed. Specifically, I’m thinking of Java Applets, and all the time I > wasted writing them. While watching the presentations, I couldn’t help but > notice the almost constant promotion of ES6 classes, and their use within > Polymer 2. I also couldn’t miss the constant assumption that this will be > the standard, that should be adopted. The more I thought about these > annoyances, the more they continued to bother me, and it makes me question > if our industry will every make any real progress, and move past a single > set of ideas. Here are some very basic examples to help highlight my > point: A Basic Java Applet import java.applet.Applet;import > java.awt.Graphics;public class HelloWorld extends Applet { public void > paint(Graphics g) { g.drawString("Hello world!", 50, 25); > }}<HTML><HEAD><TITLE> A Simple Program </TITLE></HEAD><BODY>Here is the > output of my program:<APPLET CODE="HelloWorld.class" WIDTH=150 > HEIGHT=25></APPLET></BODY></HTML> A Basic Polymer 2 Component <link > rel="import" > href="https://polygit.org/components/polymer/polymer-element.html > <https://polygit.org/components/polymer/polymer-element.html>"><script> // > Define the class for a new element called custom-element class > CustomElement extends Polymer.Element { static get is() { return > "custom-element"; } constructor() { super(); > this.textContent = "I'm a custom-element."; } } // Register > the new element with the browser customElements.define(CustomElement.is, > CustomElement);</script> <!DOCTYPE html><html lang="en"> <head> <script > src="https://polygit.org/components/webcomponentsjs/webcomponents-loader.js > <https://polygit.org/components/webcomponentsjs/webcomponents-loader.js>"></script> > > <link rel="import" href="custom-element.html"> </head> <body> > <custom-element></custom-element> </body></html> These feel eerily > similar to each other don’t they? I can’t help but think that a certain > style off code, primarily a certain form of OOPs is once again being forced > on the developer. Each time the presenters proudly proclaimed we use ES6 > classes with inheritance and everything; I couldn’t help but cringe, then > follow it with a little chuckle. I mean really, we were doing this two > decades ago. With the ever increasing awareness of functional programming > styles and their benefits, it’s a little frustrating to feel like the > “platform” is forcing or promoting one style without an obvious open door > to other styles. A monolithic conceptual paradigm will certainly result in > a false barrier to innovation, and will force the creation of even more > abstractions over the “platform”. This just makes me want to stay as far > away from Polymer and web components as I can, which I know isn’t the > intention, but is the side effect of the message that was being presented. > I’m certain that I’m not alone in the assumptions that I’ve made, and that > negative feelings that were inadvertently created as a result of these > presentations. I’m sure that I’ve missed many of the finer details, and > I’m probably wrong on all accounts; However, I would love to learn how > the Polymer team, and the standards committees are planning to > interoperate, and even accommodate some of the ideas from Purescript, Elm, > ClojureScript, and others. At the end of the day it’s still all just some > form of JS, but I’m fearful that the tech community will continue to > recreate Java over and over again without regard to other advancements and > ideas. Many Thanks!-- Nick* > Follow Polymer on Google+: plus.google.com/107187849809354688692 --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Polymer" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/polymer-dev/5593e4b0-581e-483e-818f-78429800ef02%40googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
