What are (potential) disadvantages of using meteor.js? [closed]

Question

I have just watched the meteor.js screencast and I'm quite blown away by how easy building a web application with it seems, in terms of live updates and database synchronisation. However, I am not sure of how well it would scale once it's live.

What problems (potential or real) could I have if I decide to build and deploy a web application written on meteor.js?

Answer 1

Well, I would advice you have a play about with meteor and make the judgement yourself. It really depends on what you wish to develop

Certain constraints I have found are

• Meteor comes bundled with only mongodb. Other database support are planned for later releases

• No model/object form binding (in road map)

• Package system is not npm (although Meteor is built on node) and is closed to community. All meteor packages are developed by meteor themselves

Regarding performance, I found this article helpful

Here is another link to meteors roadmap

From my experience, I would say the advantages I have found outweigh any disadvantages at the moment

Answer 2

Having built client projects in meteor there is 2 things I immediately found hindering about the system:

1) No native support for MSSQL / MySQL or in fact any other DB than MongoDB (which jamin mentioned). That said, it sort of makes sense as to why this is the case, as a NoSQL solution with an easy to use JS api makes sense over a clunk RDMB database. However there is a plugin called Meteor SQL which supports MySQL at the moment https://github.com/drorm/meteor-sql

2) No native support for windows - Meteor is only released on linux & OSX meaning us windows users are out of the loop. There is an unofficial windows build on http://win.meteor.com but it's stuck at 0.5.9.

I probably wouldn't recommend building full sites out of Meteor yet as well due to it's various instabilities - https://github.com/meteor/meteor/issues however in a controlled environment it's perfect.

Also bear in mind Meteor have achieved an $11m funding grant - http://venturebeat.com/2012/07/25/meteor-funding/ meaning it will continue to improve and grow.