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Angular 2 versus React

medium.com

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Re: Angular 2 versus React

#11

Post by lomnakkus »

albertoleal wrote: post #5
guftagu wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you factor in the learning curve of the usual tools that go with React like Flux/Redux, Webpack, Router and whatnot, the combined cognitive load becomes a lot.

You get the advantage of choosing any of those libraries/tools that make up an application (e.g. choosing a router library that makes sense to you [or the team] and/or for your app). Thus, intrinsically the learning curve is much more digestible than grokking why certain parts of a monolithic framework (e.g. Angular) are designed the way they are.

However, that may also lead to being kind of paralyzed by the amount of choice you have. I know I'm not alone in sometimes preferring to have most of the[1] choices already made for me. (Especially when I'm not really a domain expert nor interested in trying to keep up with all the newest goings-on in the area.)

[1] Ultimately probably insignificant, overall.

Re: Angular 2 versus React

#12

Post by lucidrains »

plexicle wrote: post #9

To me it really feels like Polymer is taking all of the pros from both of these "libraries" or "frameworks" or whatever you want to call it and none of the cons. Why aren't we talking more about that? Polymer is a fraction of the size. It's one of several ways right now to write custom components. React and Angular2 do the same thing yet they are both bloated and force tons of tools and tech down your throat. For wha…

Is there any substantial apps written in Polymer yet?

Re: Angular 2 versus React

#13

Post by lomnakkus »

plexicle wrote: post #9

To me it really feels like Polymer is taking all of the pros from both of these "libraries" or "frameworks" or whatever you want to call it and none of the cons. Why aren't we talking more about that? Polymer is a fraction of the size. It's one of several ways right now to write custom components. React and Angular2 do the same thing yet they are both bloated and force tons of tools and tech down your throat. For wha…

Well, browser compatibility is still a big problem with Polymer. A simple click-and-select-stuff-quickly-while-moving-mouse-around test can often lead to focus and/or the selection being "stuck" on Firefox -- even on simple widget demo pages. (This was a few months ago, things may have improved.) Probably on other browsers too.

React works perfectly today.

> I see 2016 as the year that people slowly begin to realize that while components ARE the future, you don't need big frameworks or libraries or 4000 node modules.

What would you call Web Components (polymer) if not a "big framework or library"? That's effectively what Shadow DOM, custom elements, &c amount to -- it's just standardized and shipped with the browser. (Yes, that's a massive advantage, but not until we have 100% working shims and/or browsers that comply 99%+ with the specs.)

EDIT: I should also say: Polymer itself is quite opinionated about how you should structure your custom components (and thus JS code) and this may be a disadvantage to some. This doesn't seem to affect Web Components per se, so that's something. Also, something like the virtual DOM will probably still be needed for speed.

Re: Angular 2 versus React

#14

Post by kcorbitt »

onetwotree wrote: post #2

React's learning curve is tiny compared to Angular. With React, you need to understand the component API, which consists of about 5 methods that one uses regularly, and the top level API, which consists of 2 (or just 1 if you use ES6 class syntax to create components). And as the article points out, it's just JavaScript.

I've briefly used Angular 1 a few years ago, and have been involved in the React ecosystem for the last two years. I really like React, it gets a lot of things right and I think it has a bright future.

But I don't envy people who come into the React ecosystem today as their first experience with large-scale front-end development. As soon as you get past a "hello world" Todo app, even trying to figure out what questions to ask to get to a scaleable app design can be tough. There are good, stable solutions to most common problems like state management (Redux) and routing (React Router), as well as a ton of other goodies like server-side rendering and hot module reloading available, but if you don't know what you're looking for you're in for a lot of contradictory and sometimes outdated advice about what tools to use for what, and the best way to wire all of them up.

That said, this is an issue that the community is acutely aware of (there's been a lot of chatter on Twitter about it recently, although there's definitely still more questions than answers) and one that I think will get better with time.

Re: Angular 2 versus React

#16

Post by tptacek »

guftagu wrote: post #3
onetwotree wrote: post #2

React's learning curve is tiny compared to Angular. With React, you need to understand the component API, which consists of about 5 methods that one uses regularly, and the top level API, which consists of 2 (or just 1 if you use ES6 class syntax to create components). And as the article points out, it's just JavaScript.

When you factor in the learning curve of the usual tools that go with React like Flux/Redux, Webpack, Router and whatnot, the combined cognitive load becomes a lot.

You don't need Flux/Redux to use React. React without a Flux-alike is very much like Sinatra compared to Rails. If your goal is to learn React, Flux gets in the way, and you shouldn't bother.

Browserify/Webpack is a giant pain and my least favorite part of this programming environment, but I'm not clear what it has to do with React. Is the concern here that React is packaged in such a way that you can't use it with a simple script inclusion, and that you must use a bundling system?

Router libraries are even less essential to React than Flux. I've never used one.

Re: Angular 2 versus React

#17

Post by sehr »

lucidrains wrote: post #12
plexicle wrote: post #9

To me it really feels like Polymer is taking all of the pros from both of these "libraries" or "frameworks" or whatever you want to call it and none of the cons. Why aren't we talking more about that? Polymer is a fraction of the size. It's one of several ways right now to write custom components. React and Angular2 do the same thing yet they are both bloated and force tons of tools and tech down your throat. For wha…

Is there any substantial apps written in Polymer yet?

https://gaming.youtube.com is probably one of the bigger ones, but of course it doesn't support mobile so you can only check it out on desktop.

Re: Angular 2 versus React

#18

Post by plexicle »

lucidrains wrote: post #12
plexicle wrote: post #9

To me it really feels like Polymer is taking all of the pros from both of these "libraries" or "frameworks" or whatever you want to call it and none of the cons. Why aren't we talking more about that? Polymer is a fraction of the size. It's one of several ways right now to write custom components. React and Angular2 do the same thing yet they are both bloated and force tons of tools and tech down your throat. For wha…

Is there any substantial apps written in Polymer yet?

That's exactly the wrong question.

The right question is: "are there any substantial apps that take advantage of native Web Components (polyfill or not)?" The answer to that is: "yes, a lot."

Polymer is just one way to write the components. X-Tag is another. Pure JavaScript is another. Use one of them or use them all. No big overarching framework required.

Re: Angular 2 versus React

#19

Post by Kwastie »

plexicle wrote: post #9

To me it really feels like Polymer is taking all of the pros from both of these "libraries" or "frameworks" or whatever you want to call it and none of the cons. Why aren't we talking more about that? Polymer is a fraction of the size. It's one of several ways right now to write custom components. React and Angular2 do the same thing yet they are both bloated and force tons of tools and tech down your throat. For wha…

Why did Google create Polymer? Google isn't using it. This is almost the same 'problem' with "AngularJS by Google", it's almost never used by Google.

Edit: The reason I like React more is the fact that Facebook uses it in a high traffic production setting.

Edit 2: I think the whole Javascript (or framework) fatigue is just a 'transition problem'. Old tools are getting replaced by new tools, causing confusion..

Re: Angular 2 versus React

#20

Post by jerf »

jlas wrote: post #8

> You spend your time writing plain ‘ol JavaScript. That’s the future I believe in. How about a future where you don't write any code at all? This is the beauty of Angular's markup-centric approach, it's declarative so that means less code, which means less opportunities for devs who enjoy typing to screw things up. Jeremy Keith made a good point in his An Event Apart talk [1], where he talks about HTML slowly subsum…

If you're writing loops, and especially if you write loops that have conditionals inside of them, you're writing code. "Declarative" is saying "I want a list of all users", "For every user, display their name like this" is just code.

I've seen a lot of template languages that claim to be declarative, I'm yet to see a production template (that is to say, not an "example") that actually looks declarative and isn't just writing code in a language with poor constructs for writing code.

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