Meteor is billed as an open source JavaScript platform for quickly building Web apps. Only launched in 2012, Meteor has quickly become popular with developers, but it vies for the hearts and minds of software builders against other JavaScript frameworks, such as Angular.js, Ember.js, and Backbone.js. InfoWorldEditor at Large Paul Krill recently interviewed Matt DeBergalis of Meteor Development Group, who co-authored Meteor along with Geoff Schmidt and Nick Martin, about the project and its uniqueness.
InfoWorld: Why the name Meteor?
DeBergalis: We wanted something evocative. Look, programming got way too hard in the last 10 years. Web programming used to be very simple. The original Rails book was less than an inch thick, if I remember right. And that's all you needed to know. You could write a whole app. And we lost our way. Somehow in the last 10 years, it got incredibly hard to write these apps. Now you need to piece together a dozen technologies to have a modern application. And it stopped being fun somewhere along the way. Meteor is designed to be fun for developers. It's designed to be something that people can enjoy, that kindles a sense of curiosity and excitement. We really want it to be possible for many more people in the world to be able to write really great software, and the name is something that we just think reflects [that] it's cool, it's a little science-y, it's accessible, it's not supertechnical, it's not jargon, it doesn't scare you off if you're not an expert developer.
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