A new approach to creating web applications, Meteor development has attracted many developers this year owing to the fact that it significantly simplifies the development process. Solutions for server-side activities and the ones executed on the user side combined, makes the platform fit for application development in addition to being just a framework.

What’s in it for developers?

• Novice programmers needn’t learn more programming languages in addition to HTML, JavaScript and CSS to build websites.
  
• Same for front end developers though they need to know JavaScript.
  
• Backend developers needn’t learn more solutions to improve responsiveness of applications
  

Although it isn’t compulsory, Meteor allows developers to use any other framework they want. With not much changes to the framework’s structure, Meteor.js also fulfills the needs of developers without having to install third party libraries or work on configurations and settings.

It’s easy to use

Meteor takes care of most of the work for the developers. So they don’t need to understand a lot of web development solutions. They don’t need to configure most of the features of Meteor either. Meteor also doesn’t introduce any new keywords, minimizing issues with the syntax. 

AtmosphereJS, a plugin comprising of ready-made solutions, can be added to the application, essentially saving the developers from potential headaches.

Operation speed

Meteor’s reactivity is one of its most impressive features. It notes the changes made to an application data, and then updates the same data on the server side. The server, in turn, demands all the clients to update this data as well. Changes are made everywhere in one go without needing to update the web browser window. 

This speed is due to 3 important factors.

• Distributed Data Protocol – A client-server protocol for querying and updating server-side database.
  
• Minimongo – Uses applications’ data stored in the browser (locally). It’s a MongoDB client-side implementation.
  
• Latency Compensation – Compensates the latency making outcomes visible to the user immediately without waiting for response from the server-side. 
  

Disadvantages?

Meteor comes with a few demerits as well. For starters, it doesn’t have a native support for SQL based databases. Another disadvantage was that it lacked support for Nodejs Package Manager (NPM). But they recently released Meteor 1.3 version with NPM support. Meteor is also not recommended when you want to integrate with existing applications developed in a different environment. 

Obviously, the merits outweigh the demerits. Apart from this, Meteor also has a wide and active web community. Open source development is easier with Meteor, as you can get adequate technical support from its vast community on top of its various useful features.