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Free React.js Fundamentals Course

courses.reactjsprogram.com

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Re: Free React.js Fundamentals Course

#101

Post by jwr »

noobie wrote: post #12

Honest noob question, what's with all the hype about React? Edit: Awesome replies, thank you!

Let me provide a different viewpoint. React is important for ClojureScript developers for slightly different reasons. It is a well-maintained solution for quickly rendering component-based applications based on immutable data structures.

In other words, you can think of the user interface as a function of your app's state, where the state is neatly kept in one place, instead of smeared all over the code. And since ClojureScript has excellent immutable data structures, you get great performance right out of the box. Things that do not need to be re-rendered aren't.

So, when React arrived it fit like a well-designed glove. Suddenly one could easily create complex apps with few lines of code and great performance.

As a side note, there are some aspects of React that we don't care about. JSX is one: various lisp-like languages have been using vector/list syntax for HTML for years, so in ClojureScript you don't have to use a separate syntax or pre-process your files: your functions just return nested vectors with HTML elements. Much more natural.

Re: Free React.js Fundamentals Course

#102

Post by rimantas »

Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #14
noobie wrote: post #12

Honest noob question, what's with all the hype about React? Edit: Awesome replies, thank you!

It fundamentally changes the way we think about frontend web development in a very positive way. It makes things more testable, reliable, fast, and easier to write. Combined with things like Redux we also get crazy features like time travel.

If your are optimizing for the development, you ar doing it wrong. So sad to see years of effort on making web more accessible thrown out of the window. How do react/angular/whatever sites work with assistive technologies like JAWS? The first thing learning about these frameworks should be when not to use them.

Re: Free React.js Fundamentals Course

#103

Post by tehbeard »

mattmanser wrote: post #98
hathawsh wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From my point of view, React brings two important ideas to web app development: 1. The virtual DOM. When I'm writing jQuery-based code, I have to write both a component template and code that updates the DOM in response to input; when I'm writing code for a virtual DOM, the component template is sufficient to update the DOM and I don't have to write that extra code, so there are fewer chances for bugs to creep in. 2.…

If by virtual Dom you mean data binding, that's not a new concept, it's just not been client-side because JavaScript was too slow until recently. Also data-binding brings its own myriad of problems that older programmers will know about from the days of desktop programming. And 2 just sounds like a violation of the rule we've all learnt not to mix presentation and code. So they're not reasons why React is interesting…

Perhaps you could elaborate on the myriad of problems with data-binding the prior generation has encountered, and how they are fixed or exacerbated by React's solution?

And with number 2, this is subjective, should a template be responsible for rendering it's children (necessitating the need for for loops)? Should it handle filtering in the case of tabulated data, in a way that is consistent and re-usable, or should this be another layer sat between model/controller and the view?

Re: Free React.js Fundamentals Course

#104

Post by yoz-y »

mattmanser wrote: post #99
foxhedgehog wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just a note paraphrasing a Medium post that I encountered that extends point 2: it's a lot more robust to work with a framework that essentially puts HTML into Javascript rather than many alternatives, which essentially do the reverse. Javascript is a lot more complex than HTML, and yet most of the alternative JS frameworks attempt to compress some version of its logic into templating.

So we should throw away decades of practical experience in all the other platforms that this is a bad idea because some blog post said so?

What other platforms embed a subset of a language into the templating one? I've only seen this done in HTML. Even "back then" I opted to use pure PHP for templates rather that trying to use some comment magic based DSL that does little more than variable replacement and a for loop. The templates in Angular for example are a good example of what is wrong with stuffing code into templates rather than going the other way around.

Re: Free React.js Fundamentals Course

#105

Post by mattmanser »

foxhedgehog wrote: post #100
mattmanser wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So we should throw away decades of practical experience in all the other platforms that this is a bad idea because some blog post said so?

Surely your decades of practical experience can instance an evidence-based response here.

Why the personal attack?

It's not a 'new' complaint about React, it's been said plenty of times, go do your own research.

Re: Free React.js Fundamentals Course

#106

Post by Sir_Cmpwn »

rimantas wrote: post #102
Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It fundamentally changes the way we think about frontend web development in a very positive way. It makes things more testable, reliable, fast, and easier to write. Combined with things like Redux we also get crazy features like time travel.

If your are optimizing for the development, you ar doing it wrong. So sad to see years of effort on making web more accessible thrown out of the window. How do react/angular/whatever sites work with assistive technologies like JAWS? The first thing learning about these frameworks should be when not to use them.

There's nothing about React that makes it worse for screen readers.

Re: Free React.js Fundamentals Course

#107

Post by tm33 »

ramenmeal wrote: post #95
tm33 wrote: post #18

I don't know what to say. I'm deeply humbled by all the kind comments in here. Thank you all so much, truly.

Thanks for this class. I'm just starting it. One question: How do I know when to do/start the curriculum? Will it be pointed out when I get far enough in the 'lecture' material?

Hi! Yes it will be. Basically when your done it gives you "What's next" instructions as the last text section.

Re: Free React.js Fundamentals Course

#108

Post by tm33 »

bhaisaab wrote: post #96
tm33 wrote: post #18

I don't know what to say. I'm deeply humbled by all the kind comments in here. Thank you all so much, truly.

Thanks a lot, as a backend distributed systems person I have hard time understanding UI in general. I'm half way through your videos now, and for the first time I could grok what React is all about.

This is exactly what I was going for. Thank you so much for the confirmation! Means a lot.

Re: Free React.js Fundamentals Course

#109

Post by tm33 »

namocat wrote: post #91
imh wrote: post #88

I wish there was some way to speed up the videos.

It's an HTML5 video, so you can adjust the speed with JS if you can get the right element. e.g. to set the playback speed to 120%, you can do: document.getElementsByTagName('video')[0].playbackRate = 1.2; in the JS console.

This is genius!
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