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Ask HN: Abandoned/dead projects you think died before their time and why?

358 points ofalkaed | 2 comments | 11 Oct 25 22:16 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source

Just curious and who knows, maybe someone will adopt it or develop something new based on its ideas.
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PufPufPuf ◴[12 Oct 25 08:00 UTC] No.45556252[source]▶
Definitely Opa: http://opalang.org/

In 2011, before TypeScript, Next.js or even React, they had seamless server-client code, in a strongly typed functional language with support for features like JSX-like inline HTML, async/await, string interpolation, built-in MongoDB ORM, CSS-in-JS, and many syntax features that were added to ECMAScript since then.

I find it wild how this project was 90%+ correct on how we will build web apps 14 years later.

replies(2): >>45561792 #>>45565783 #
1. hshdhdhehd ◴[12 Oct 25 20:52 UTC] No.45561792[source]▶
Wow, why didnt this take off?
replies(1): >>45566411 #
2. PufPufPuf ◴[13 Oct 25 09:20 UTC] No.45566411[source]▶
My best guess is:

- not backed by a huge corporation (React = FB, TypeScript = Microsoft, Next.js = Vercel, ...)

- many of the ideas I listed above were controversial at the time of introduction, I can imagine that Opa must have felt overwhelming

- Opa didn't actually have components or state management, which was a pain point on which React originally took off