The Future of nodejs/examples?

[avivkeller]

The repository hasn't been updated for a few years and is missing modern examples of Node.js code. If it's not actively maintained, is it still necessary?

It serves as a reference for a few links, but in my opinion, its outdated state limits its usefulness. Maybe it should be either archived or updated?

[Trott]

I think it should be archived. @nodejs/tsc

[benjamingr]

+1 for archive

[mhdawson]

+1 for me as well.

[avivkeller]

I’ve opened a PR against the website to remove its link to the repository, as it’s the only link (that’s not in an archived repository or changelog) to the repository.

With that link removed, the repository will become an orphan, so even more of a reason to archive it.

[AugustinMauroy]

Shouldn't we be looking to relaunch an initiative on the repo instead of archiving it?
Because the idea of putting the code there and having the explanations on the learn section of node is really not stupid. It avoids having long codeboxes.

Some lasted news about this repo nodejs/next-10#154
cc @sheplu

[sheplu]

I did not have time to publish and work as much as I wanted but I booked some time in the next two weeks to finalize the plan and start bringing that up to date - and link that to the documentation / new website

[AugustinMauroy]

Jean, I'd be happy to give you a hand, but I don't have access to this repo.

[avivkeller]

IMO the problem with updating it is that it'll need to contain modern examples, so it'll have to change every update.

Rather than updating the repository, users can visit various GitHub sources, including Node.js itself, to see all sorts of real-world examples.

[Trott]

Shouldn't we be looking to relaunch an initiative on the repo instead of archiving it?
Because the idea of putting the code there and having the explanations on the learn section of node is really not stupid. It avoids having long codeboxes.

I get what you're saying. From my perspective, the problems are:

1. The information is siloed in a place where it won't get updated. We have waaaay too many siloed repositories in Node.js. IMO, the org could probably archive half of the currently not-yet-archived repositories and we'd still probably have too many. All these repositories don't result in lots of active, loosely-coupled work. They instead mostly contribute to a sense of being overwhelmed.
2. I'm not convinced we should be doing this at all. Examples can be in our docs. Examples that don't fit in our docs....maybe shouldn't be hosted by us? We don't have to provide a comprehensive how-to on Node.js. When there is inevitably a problem with the examples, it makes the Node.js website look bad. We want the website to be as credible and authoritative as possible. That means not trying to be comprehensive. It means providing a reasonably restricted amount of accurate and helpful information.

We do not need to provide complete code for a "fake name generator". Interested parties can look at the many examples on GitHub by sindresorhus and others.

We do not need to provide a complete code example of how to count entries in a directory just so that we can show people how to use yargs. People can look at the yargs documentation.

We do not need to provide a complete code example for an express app. That's what the express docs are for. (And, if this repository were more active and popular, we'd be hosting examples for a dozen other third-party modules. No, please, just no.)

[AugustinMauroy]

I agree on point 1.

"maybe shouldn't be hosted by us" I don't agree with that 100%, I think we should have some sort of "official" examples. But yes the question arises "is a repo all by itself a good idea". I think yes on one condition, if we create a team "examples/content" that has the codeowner on the learn section and the example repo.

Also, there's one point on which I agree with you 200%, and that's that under no circumstances should we promote a package or make a tutorial on this page. We must restrict ourselves to node alone as a telel

[Trott]

If we don't archive it (which, honestly, I still think we should), we could perhaps give the website team and/or the next-10 team access instead of individuals. (I think giving individuals access to repos is an anti-pattern and wish we would not do that. We're bad about maintaining/pruning team memberships, but we are unbelievably terrible at maintaining individual permissions on repos.)

[AugustinMauroy]

@ovflowd and @bmuenzenmeyer I'd like your opinion, as you're a maintainer.

Personally, I also think that personal access should not be given to a repo. But on the other hand I don't think it's a good idea to give access to the team website because that's not its purpose. But if I'm sure that the work will be done because this team has a good synergy and at the moment it's still the team that does the review for the learn section even though it's outside its remit.
PS: code vs content