Comments on: Google releases Closure, the tools behind the JS geniuses

By: DmitryBaranovskiy

DmitryBaranovskiy — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 06:27:03 +0000

I wouldn’t call people behind Closure even JavaScript developers. Read this and rethink your “Wow!”: http://tr.im/closurefail

By: Jadet

Jadet — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 23:16:22 +0000

I wouldn’t call the people behind Closure Javascript geniuses. Just reading the source will tell anyone that there’s a lot of bad practices going on. I’m disappointed that Google is throwing this out there in its current state, either they are clueless or they expect us to improve things for them. All this tells me is that Google should be looking for some real coders.

By: tayfun

tayfun — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 22:26:14 +0000

@bentruyman: True, making javascript suck less for the end user is the basic premise here. But, we had to wait all these time to see what an influential company like Google uses at the core of their products. You simply couldn’t understand obfuscated JS code that is linked. Doesn’t that mean anything?

These tools are certainly great, but they are hindering the easiness of learning from quality code.

By: lesgreen

lesgreen — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 17:39:05 +0000

This looks interesting. I’m going to have to check it out. I especially like the number of ui widgets that the Library has to offer.

By: tercero12

tercero12 — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 15:31:34 +0000

I think the answer is no. Reading: http://code.google.com/closure/compiler/docs/api-tutorial3.html makes no mention of gzip compression. Actually the advanced compilation thing looks really scary to me. Look at externs…if you were to produce code like this, it could not be used in uncompiled form because the extern would stomp on the legit code. Simple compilation for me.

By: tercero12

tercero12 — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 15:29:08 +0000

Does the Closure compiler include the same features mentioned in this article: http://timepedia.blogspot.com/2009/08/on-reducing-size-of-compressed.html ?? If so, that would be sooo cool.

By: bentruyman

bentruyman — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 13:32:23 +0000

@cancelbubble & @tayfun: I said this over on Reddit in that at the end of the day we’re trying to better serve our users. For the majority of us, that means decreasing the payload of our markup, stylesheets, and scripts. This is especially important these days as our scripts are no longer the kind of scripts we had 10 years ago when they consisted of a few functions.

By: tayfun

tayfun — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 12:00:02 +0000

@ibolmo: Closure Inspector does not solve what cancelbubble is saying. You need to have your real source code at hand to be able to map your obfuscated code with the real one.

You already couldn’t read most of the JavaScript found at Google’s websites thanks to GWT optimizations etc. Now it will only get worse with other people doing this.

By: ibolmo

ibolmo — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 08:55:20 +0000

@cancelbubble: Take a look at Closure Inspector: http://code.google.com/closure/compiler/docs/inspector.html

By: cancelbubble

cancelbubble — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 06:44:06 +0000

Compiler (and various other JS optimizers) are cool, but at the same time when you view-source on optimized pages, you can’t learn anything from the code.

By: ffreak

ffreak — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 03:04:23 +0000

I wonder if you do have some internal Google Plugin for Eclipse extensions to support development with Closure and if there’s a hope that it’ll be released at some point? Other than that – I just can’t wait to dig into it!

By: paulbo99

paulbo99 — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:08:04 +0000

Wow, I was just considering different options to templatize my components. I’ll definitely check this out, and If it performs well, I’ll be really tempted to rewrite my app using closure….
I wonder if this will become the official gwt template system and how this will relate with gwt in general.

By: aw2xcd

aw2xcd — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:05:16 +0000

Mootools compiled to: 52.23KB (17.77KB gzipped) compared to yui: 65.32KB (20.44KB gzipped)

Btw, haven’t tried using this version yet :)

By: icoloma

icoloma — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 21:38:59 +0000

I like the templates engine (using the same template for js and java is exactly one of my use cases) but I was a little disappointed after experimenting with gxp. I think I will keep it in my TODO list for a while.

By: slightlyoff

slightlyoff — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 21:11:32 +0000

Congrats to the Closure team. It’s an incredibly impressive body of work.

By: smith

smith — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 20:44:56 +0000

I’m sure it’s great, but like Prototype, it’s a terrible name because it is easily confused with a core JS concept. Be on the lookout for my new frameworks: If, Var, While, Function, String, Object, and Curry!