Is Polymer still alive?

[Joern Turner]

Hi,

allow a disclaimer first:
sorry if the following sounds harsh or provoking - it's mainly cause i love Web Components and Polymer and we as a company have invested into it quite a bit. That's why i'm shouting...

BUT: i seriously concerned about the current state of the community. I've asked for advice here several times and got no answer. The Googe+ group also doesn't seem to burst from activity and the enthusiasm from the Polymer 1.x days seems to have gone away completely. No more fancy videos (loved those), no more experts mixing into the discussions, no significant promotion activity in social media to make people curious or at least give them a feeling that they can trust in the future of Polymer.

I'm working and maintaining Open Source projects for over 15 years now and if i've learned something than it's about the importance of community work. And believe me - i know how much hard work it is to keep it going. But If questions are left unanswered, if no significant improvements happen people will just go away. And they are right - how shall i trust in the future of a product if there's  no significant public activity. Seems that the main promoters like e.g. Eric Bidelman and Rob Dodson have moved on to other areas of interest and are not even listening here any more.

I still very much hope that the project will go on and evolve but if there's nobody feeling responsible for letting people know what's going on that will hardly happen.

We know that Google is behind Polymer (or should i've used 'was') - and that gave me some hope in the past but nowadays i'm asking myself more and more if that's one of Google's fabulous projects that started with big buzz just to silently die some time after (see Wave, GWT and surely a whole bunch of others).

I have hoped that with Web Components and Polymer there finally is a hope to escape the framework hell that over and over again dumps years of knowledge building for the next big hype coming along. IMHO it would help us all to evolve and improve things in a continous effort and moving along standards that have a longer lifetime than the 'last big thing'.

I would appreciate and be thankful for everybody speaking up against my above statements.

Best,

Joern

[Joern Turner]

I've to partly apologize - looking at some videos revealed some new resources to study namely https://developers.google.com/web/fundamentals/web-components/examples/

But why are such important informations not gathered somewhere on polymer-project.org? Or am i missing something. It would be really helpful for developers to know where the important stuff happens.

Thanks for listening,

Joern

[Mark]

Is Polymer still alive? Yeah, I'd say so. The team has been working on Polymer 3 which seems to be what the focus is but their Github issues page does seem to be accumulating. I have to agree with you on the fact that the Polymer contributors are not as responsive (on this thread at least) but I always thought it was because this is a Google Group rather than an official mailing list or something. I see that Polymer Github repository is the best place to file issues/bugs with the framework. But teams like W3C and WHATWG also have mailing lists and discourse forums for questions, proposals and discussion. Is there some sort of similar mailing list for Polymer? 

[Karl Tiedt]

Most activity happens on slack these days. That's always been the primary support means for polymer.

Follow Polymer on Google+: plus.google.com/107187849809354688692
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[Taylor Savage]

Hey Joern,

Product Manager of Chrome's web developer products here. Thanks for reaching out, and appreciate the honest interest in the project and frank feedback. I think this might just be a case of looking in the wrong place.

On the Polymer team, when it comes to community building we try to follow where the community goes. To that effect, we've found Slack and Twitter to be much more effective for community outreach and conversation. We use Slack (as Karl mentions) for more 1:1 and real-time convos - the community on there is hugely active. The whole Polymer engineering team is in there as well and is regularly on #general, #tools, etc. And we use Twitter for more 1:many convos - we try not to spam, but all major announcements go up there.

As for Google's investment in the project, I certainly commiserate with your fear of another launch-and-fizzle, but investment in Polymer has actually been dramatically increasing over the years. Check out the Polymer Summit 2017 videos which happened this August.

This said, we have a lot more work to do to be better at communicating timelines and roadmaps. The project's evolutionary cycle tends to follow our major conferences - Google I/O in the Spring, Polymer Summit/Chrome Dev Summit in the Fall. Because we have the biggest visibility at those times, we tend to concentrate our releases and announcements around those events. And in between, we have a habit of lulling into heads-down work on the next thing. We're working on restructuring responsibilities better within the team to make sure we break through these silent periods, and get updates and roadmaps more publicly communicated year-round.

So in short - thank you for the feedback, definitely something we are working on, and also make sure to join Slack and follow on Twitter!

Thanks,

Taylor

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[Joern Turner]

Mark,

Am Freitag, 10. November 2017 14:03:10 UTC+1 schrieb Mark:

Is Polymer still alive? Yeah, I'd say so. The team has been working on Polymer 3 which seems to be what the focus is but their Github issues page does seem to be accumulating. I have to agree with you on the fact that the Polymer contributors are not as responsive (on this thread at least) but I always thought it was because this is a Google Group rather than an official mailing list or something. I see that Polymer Github repository is the best place to file issues/bugs with the framework. But teams like W3C and WHATWG also have mailing lists and discourse forums for questions, proposals and discussion. Is there some sort of similar mailing list for Polymer? 

Yes, of course bugs should be reported on Github but that's certainly not the place to ask conceptual questions. Especially if you promote a new technology like Web Components you should be ready to help users to adapt it without assuming that everybody is following the whole history or even works every day with that software.

I have to confess that i've stumbled across the best practices just recently and that's really a good resource. A mailing list or lets say a group like this is IMO still the best resource ask more conceptual questions or to provide feedback that goes beyond the most simplest statements.. Even the best documentation doesn't answer all questions.

[Joern Turner]

Karl,

Am Freitag, 10. November 2017 17:44:43 UTC+1 schrieb Karl Tiedt:

Most activity happens on slack these days. That's always been the primary support means for polymer.

thanks for the answer and i noticed that. I'm using chat the whole day but i don't think it's the best place to ask conceptual questions or get help with a piece of code. Unless you got a rather trivial question the chances aren't too high that someone will jump right away into a question that needs probably more than 5 Minutes of thinking.  As there are other seeking attention an issue will get quickly out of sight again and be buried in the flow of conversations. Happened to me not just once.

We're running an Open Source project since 2001 and have both a chat channel and a mailinglist and both are alive. It's just different questions you handle in these 'places'.

But thanks anyway - any help is appreciated.

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[Joern Turner]

Taylor,

i really appreciate your detailed answer.

Am Montag, 13. November 2017 20:07:53 UTC+1 schrieb Taylor Savage:

Hey Joern,

Product Manager of Chrome's web developer products here. Thanks for reaching out, and appreciate the honest interest in the project and frank feedback. I think this might just be a case of looking in the wrong place.

On the Polymer team, when it comes to community building we try to follow where the community goes. To that effect, we've found Slack and Twitter to be much more effective for community outreach and conversation. We use Slack (as Karl mentions) for more 1:1 and real-time convos - the community on there is hugely active. The whole Polymer engineering team is in there as well and is regularly on #general, #tools, etc. And we use Twitter for more 1:many convos - we try not to spam, but all major announcements go up there.

I noticed the slack channel and actually have a account but as i state in this thread i don't think that chat is the answer to all questions coming up with such a new technology stack as Web Components and Polymer. Especially first-time adopters often profit from advice by experts in how to do things. Chats may certainly help in some situations but a mail or group gives me the opportunity to put down my question properly when i find time for it.

As for Google's investment in the project, I certainly commiserate with your fear of another launch-and-fizzle, but investment in Polymer has actually been dramatically increasing over the years. Check out the Polymer Summit 2017 videos which happened this August.

I've looked into some of the videos and certainly they are well-done and informative. I see that there's a lot of activity and noticed that youtube uses Polymer now too. That was a big encouragement. 

This said, we have a lot more work to do to be better at communicating timelines and roadmaps. The project's evolutionary cycle tends to follow our major conferences - Google I/O in the Spring, Polymer Summit/Chrome Dev Summit in the Fall. Because we have the biggest visibility at those times, we tend to concentrate our releases and announcements around those events. And in between, we have a habit of lulling into heads-down work on the next thing. We're working on restructuring responsibilities better within the team to make sure we break through these silent periods, and get updates and roadmaps more publicly communicated year-round.

Haha - know that heads-down syndrome too well. Of course developers want to develop and not answer questions or write documentation  But once your project has lifted off you must be prepared that someone's using it ;) and even slow you down by asking questions. We have an open source project running since 2001 and i guess i have an idea of the problem.

From my point of view it would already a big step forward to maintain the community page a bit more to point to all the resources you mentioned.

Also it would certainly help also to encourage other Polymer users to report about their projects and have prominent examples listed somewhere (which would give someone like me even bigger confidence in the future of the project).

I know i know how hard this is to do in practice - but being asked for this should give you a good feeling. People like your software and want to use it!

So in short - thank you for the feedback, definitely something we are working on, and also make sure to join Slack and follow on Twitter!

I already do - maybe it's just me (an old-style open source guy) but these channels are not ideal for every kind of question but i'll do my best to use the sources. Nethertheless i'm happy there's still this group and appreciate your explanations a lot.

Thanks to you and all the developers - keep the good work going.

Joern