To YUI or not to YUI? [closed]

Question

I'm currently using the Yahoo YUI javascript library in a couple of my projects.

However, I'm a little concerned about three things. First, they laid off 10% of their employees. Second, their stock price keeps falling: especially after ignoring the MS takeover earlier this year. Third, what if someone does buy them?

The only reason I bring this up is that I tend to build applications that are going to be around for 8 to 10 years.

What would you do?

Islet

to yui or not to yui? that is the question? Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer, The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or yagni and deal with it when you do – Motorize

The projects that try to plan for 10 years out get killed and the hack you throw together for yourself ends up being departmental or company-wide for 10 years. Pardon my cynicism. – Locution

@Ken: Unless you're the boss. – Islet

4 years after I laid down this question: we are still using YUI in parts of our app and the planning done a long time ago has worked out beautifully. – Islet

YUI is discontinued as of 29th August 2014: yahooeng.tumblr.com/post/96098168666/…. This should settle the question once and for all. :-( – Neuropsychiatry

@Boldewyn: I guess it's fortunate we completed removal of YUI about a year ago. And we're now 6 years into the app lifespan with no signs of slowing down... – Islet

Answer 1

Yahoo is a major company that won't end in the next couple of year.

The Yahoo! library is open source so you will have other people to continue to improve it IF Yahoo would go bankrupt.

No technology is 100% safe for 10 years perspective, I think you aren't in danger with it.

In 10 years Javascript will be completely difference and most framework will not be the same so I think whatever you choose you will need to change a lot of thing in 10 years ;) Just be sure to keep a version of the code in you repository to always have the latest version that work for your system and you will be fine.

Penta

"The Yahoo! library is open source so you will have other people to continue to improve it IF Yahoo would go bankrupt." Well, if the app is planned for the next 10 years, then why not just use the current version, not the "improved" one? Saves you the hassle of testing for backwards compatibility :) – Fallow

Answer 2

As a member of the YUI team, I would add the following to this conversation: Almost everyone who has ever worked on the team is still with Yahoo and still working on YUI -- a remarkable consistency for a project that is now almost four years old. No one can predict the future of Yahoo at this point (or of any other company), but you can bank on the code you're using today. It's free, open under BSD, and no one can prevent you from using it regardless of what may happen in the future.

We continue to be excited about YUI and we think its next four years will be better than the last four.

Regards, Eric

Gynaecocracy

Answer 3

Everyone else here has already mentioned that YUI is open source (and thus, can be extended, forked, etc)

But the important thing to note is that Yahoo USES YUI on their own web properties. It is a valuable project to them, not just as an internal component library, but as a standardized way to write JavaScript code. Once you wrap your head around that, you'll realize that if Yahoo is still on the internet, it'll probably still be putting resources into YUI.

Also, albeit a huge fan of jQuery, a levelheaded developer cannot seriously recommend a particular framework over another without having a project context and design considerations.

You can't just assume that your square peg is going to fit in everyone's round hole, no matter how hard you try to jam it in.

Communism

Answer 4

I switched to jQuery a while back and have been much happier since doing so. You should consider the fact that YUI is open source, so you could always make any needed updates you need in the future.

Renick

I agree on the open source part, but I haven't used YUI so I can't say how they compare. – Zloty

IMO, jQuery is much easier to work with and makes writing JS code more fun. There are a lot of plug-ins, so while it has fewer features and widgets than YUI, everything you could want is freely available and easy to write if you choose to. – Renick

Answer 5

Switch to jQuery?

Casanova

Answer 6

I learned YUI prior JQuery, and the problem with YUI is (in my opinion) is over engineered, meaning that is more complex. JQUery is fun to code and at the same time you can do everything with it.

My advice would be to use JQuery, and if you need some YUI component then use both. However i don't see any particular advantage of YUI over JQuery.

Monongahela

Answer 7

Even if Yahoo! goes under, their library is open source. The community will most likely pick it up and continue its development.

Oxytetracycline

Whether the community picks it up or not, you can still keep using it, even if it's just "AS IS". – Zloty

Answer 8

I've switched over Jquery recently, and the boost in productivity is noticiable.

YUI does have better docs, but it will break compatibility on 3.0.

Leave your legacy code on yui, and switch to jquery for new devs.

Homosexual

Answer 9

I don't think its ever safe to say "one library for all solutions".

Its always best practice to analyze each project you do and then decide which library to use. Whether that be jQuery, YUI, mootools,etc.

To answer your question a bit more bluntly - don't worry. The web is one of the fastest growing and evolving sectors out there. I would be surprised if your projects don't get re-developed (by you or someone else) in the next 3 - 4 years.

Sergias

Answer 10

If your web app exists for more than 4 years in it's current form, then that's amazing. That will mean it's dealt with new browser technologies and possibly loss of existing ones. It also means that the site will not need major modifications in that time.

Most web applications I have worked on have been nearly completely rewritten after 3 years. Usually this is because requirements change; usually there are so many additions in that time that it's a completely different piece of software.

Also, in 8 years, I'm sure the YUI will have changed so much that it won't even be the same. 8 years ago it didn't exist; 8 years from now it maybe something completely different. This doesn't mean you can't continue to use the existing libraries exactly as they are.

The only thing you might think of doing is keeping versions yourself. I don't mean loading them from your own server, but just keeping them somewhere. Even just incase YUI changes something and ends up breaking something you were using--not likely.

I think any library is subject to these same concerns: YUI or jQuery, etc.

Darwen

I have two web apps that have been around for almost exactly 9 years which I'm in the midst of replacing. I'm fortunate in that the industry these apps play in is fairly static, so the requirements are pretty well known. – Islet

Wow, I guess i'm just lucky. My clients are happy and by the time the first version is done, they are wanting more. – Darwen

Answer 11

Well, Yahoo is still a profitable company with over $3 billion in the bank. I don't expect it to go bankrupt anytime soon unless they do something really awful.

However, Yahoo still needs to cut costs and they could just stop developing YUI to move the developers to other places. Just something to keep in mind on whether or not you choose to continue on w/ YUI. At it's current state, I don't see YUI being a revenue generator which is what Yahoo needs right now.

Splore

Answer 12

I've used YUI on a project 1 year ago.
I was pretty satisfied with the library even if I found really hard to grasp the way it worked. After I while I discovered jQuery and tried it on another project. Man, that was another world.
These days I am doing some changes to the old YUI project. I wanted to port everything to the 2.8 (from 2.4.2).
I expected it to be easier but it wasn't. After having spent few months on jQuery I must admit that YUI is overly complex.
You can do almost everything and configure every aspect of your App but, well, it takes ages to understand things, or at lease for me.
jQuery is much better and faster. The plugin system is amazing. I didn't try YUI 3 cause I've decided jQuery is good enough for me.

Zulema

I agree on the overly complicated part. I've actually started ripping YUI out in a lot of areas of the app. It'll probably take me another couple months to complete the job, it's a very low priority and therefore I only spend about an hour every other week on it. One of my goals had been to turn some of it into .Net user controls, but that was beyond a PITA. All I needed was drag / drop, and a rich text editor. I ended up using Telerik's editor (smaller footprint, more features). As far as Drag/drop, I have bothered replacing that yet. – Islet

Answer 13

If the library does what you need it to do today, I see no reason not to use it. 8-10 years is a long time for a web-app but I'd like to think Javascript will still be around.

If you are using it with the expectation that it will have great advancements in the future then your concerns are valid but I think the same can be said for almost any technology/language/library. And since it's open source you or others could continue the development.

Metrorrhagia

Answer 14

Here are your options:
1. Build your own Javascript library
2. Use the existing YUI library
3. Use some other 3rd party Javascript library

You can download the entire YUI library and run it from your own web server, so you don't need to depend on Yahoo servers. The code is open source, so you are free to make enhancements yourself if Yahoo stops building it. Given that, I personally think using YUI is much better than trying to roll your own Javascript library. I see a ton of benefits with virtually no risks.

The question that remains is whether you should use YUI or some other 3rd party library. Just about all the other open source libraries share the same future risk as YUI. I would personally look at the features each library supports and pick the one that currently supports everything you want (or the most of what you want).

Danikadanila

Answer 15

First, It's open source so you can continue to use it no matter what happens to Yahoo. Besides, no one thinks they are going anywhere anytime soon.

Second, no matter what third party library or tool you use, you're always faced with the risk of them abandoning the product at some point, or even worse, the company going out of business.

Regardless of either, you can still use it after either of which happens. And not until then do you really need to switch? Also, the way the web has been changing, you may not want to use YUI in a few months either way, who knows?

Zloty

Answer 16

jQuery is for coding, YUI is for learning. jQuery is more widespread than YUI because it is easy to sprinkle it on web pages that need simple DOM manipulations and basic AJAX or animations. YUI is an extremely popular library that has historically been a favorite of more advanced developers and application builders. jQuery is too small and tiny, so that you have to find other frameworks/libraries to working together. You have to take a lot time of investigating test framework, ui framework. MVC frameworks... But if you choose YUI, it's enough!!! test frameworks(browser and headless), ci tools, widgets, css grid/architecture, AOP, MVC... all the fancy features you want in one Framework! that's really kool. So if you start a enterprise project, I suggest to use YUI, though it's learning curve to be a bit steep.

Wayside