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JSX is no longer my friend

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Re: JSX is no longer my friend

#51

Post by ludamad »

levemi wrote: post #28

After many Medium posts of uninformed, not very insightful complaints about react and the state of JavaScript I am becoming inclined to just avoid Medium posts about JavaScript in general. Medium has become the analog to Tumblr posts for opinionated engineers to whine about things that don't really impact development in ways that matter. Really all this developer had to do was talk about Hyperscript in a positive way…

The author does seem to not consider the case of where you already have HTML and just plop it in and make it dynamic. Luckily JSX is completely optional, and a JSX->hyperscript converter being well possible means the syntactic choice remains only a slight annoyance at most.

Re: JSX is no longer my friend

#52

Post by js-bs »

M4v3R wrote: post #31
Mizza wrote: post #12

Finally, somebody said it. I thought we abandoned that garbage when we left PHP, and now all of a sudden everybody wants to start mixing markup and code again?

Exactly this. Can someone explain to me what do people see in JSX way of creating components? What happened to good ol' code vs template separation and what's now wrong with having two separate files - .html (or jade, or whatever) and .js?

React supports testable dumb components, low-level dumb components like this Single Pixel component, https://github.com/js-bs/SinglePixel , simply wouldn't be possible in regular html templating languages.

Re: JSX is no longer my friend

#54

Post by smussell »

I don't have any issue with the hypersrcipt library presented here. In fact I find it interesting that, this is more or less how React used to work many versions ago. All JSX tags mapped directly to functions and there was no such thing as React.createElement. In fact I was always a little sad that React made that change, it was such a natural mapping. I understand there are under the hood implementation advantages to the move, but having the option to do React.dom.ul(...) was kinda cool.

That said I really don't find any of the authors arguments particularly persuasive. I work with many inexperienced JS devs and haven't seen them struggle with these issues in JSX. Not to discount the authors experiences, it just seems this article could have been more about highlighting the library, rather than creating highly contrived seeming examples of why JSX is bad. I also agree with some of the others, that the advantage of JSX mostly comes in working with designers and people more familiar with HTML than JS.

Re: JSX is no longer my friend

#55

Post by mg74 »

breck wrote: post #43

I'm wondering what the advantages of JSX are now in a world with ES6 template strings? This seems plenty easy to read and write and has the benefit that it's pure JS and doesn't need to be compiled during development: const listItem = item => ` ${item.name} ` const listComponent = items => ` ${items.map(listItem).join("")} `

The compile is a huuuge plus. If you do a error in your template string (e.g. forget a '>'), you won't catch it until you run it in the browser. The JSX will complain loudly when compiled.

JSX >>>> ES6 template strings

Re: JSX is no longer my friend

#56

Post by vcarl »

disbelief wrote: post #49
levemi wrote: post #28

After many Medium posts of uninformed, not very insightful complaints about react and the state of JavaScript I am becoming inclined to just avoid Medium posts about JavaScript in general. Medium has become the analog to Tumblr posts for opinionated engineers to whine about things that don't really impact development in ways that matter. Really all this developer had to do was talk about Hyperscript in a positive way…

I think his points about new developers having to learn JS, React, and JSX all at the same time and then context switch between them in ways that aren't entirely clear was pretty spot on. I don't know how you draw that comparison without mentioning the shortcomings of JSX. Also with Hyperscript you're still building your markup directly in your Javascript, just using JS for it instead of JSX, not templates. Not sure…

But optimizing for those with no development experience isn't one of the goals of React. From the "thinking in react" page in the docs,

"React is, in my opinion, the premier way to build big, fast Web apps with JavaScript."

Nowhere in the documentation does it stress that it's easy to learn or ideal for beginners. If you don't know Javascript, writing React applications (or any application, really) is going to be painful. Full stop. JSX adds cognitive load when writing code, but reduces cognitive load when comparing the DOM to the component that created it. Given the amount of time I spent debugging and refactoring, I'm happy to use JSX.

Re: JSX is no longer my friend

#57

Post by cel1ne »

crudbug wrote: post #53

JSX is the template layer not tied to React. I think of it as a child of - XML + JS. I am waiting for JSS - CSS + JS, for the styling part. Radium [1] is a promising start. [1] http://stack.formidable.com/radium/

I find tachyons css the best complement for react

Re: JSX is no longer my friend

#58

Post by disbelief »

vcarl wrote: post #56
disbelief wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think his points about new developers having to learn JS, React, and JSX all at the same time and then context switch between them in ways that aren't entirely clear was pretty spot on. I don't know how you draw that comparison without mentioning the shortcomings of JSX. Also with Hyperscript you're still building your markup directly in your Javascript, just using JS for it instead of JSX, not templates. Not sure…

But optimizing for those with no development experience isn't one of the goals of React. From the "thinking in react" page in the docs, "React is, in my opinion, the premier way to build big, fast Web apps with JavaScript." Nowhere in the documentation does it stress that it's easy to learn or ideal for beginners. If you don't know Javascript, writing React applications (or any application, really) is going to be pai…

Whether or not React's goal is to cater to beginners doesn't make the argument any less valid. Also React doesn't equal JSX. The React docs also mention how to do things without JSX.

Maybe it's the article's title that has understandably rankled some people by seemingly maligning JSX. However, I think it's a very valid concern to have when ramping up a team that's unfamiliar with JS and React.

Re: JSX is no longer my friend

#59

Post by vcarl »

disbelief wrote: post #58
vcarl wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But optimizing for those with no development experience isn't one of the goals of React. From the "thinking in react" page in the docs, "React is, in my opinion, the premier way to build big, fast Web apps with JavaScript." Nowhere in the documentation does it stress that it's easy to learn or ideal for beginners. If you don't know Javascript, writing React applications (or any application, really) is going to be pai…

Whether or not React's goal is to cater to beginners doesn't make the argument any less valid. Also React doesn't equal JSX. The React docs also mention how to do things without JSX. Maybe it's the article's title that has understandably rankled some people by seemingly maligning JSX. However, I think it's a very valid concern to have when ramping up a team that's unfamiliar with JS and React.

It doesn't make it less valid, but "is JSX bad" has been done to death. It's been the subject of Medium posts like OP since I started using it in 2014. If you're "ramping up a team that's unfamiliar with JS and React," maybe you should be deciding whether to hire somebody experienced with JS and React instead of deciding whether or not to use JSX.

Re: JSX is no longer my friend

#60

Post by disbelief »

vcarl wrote: post #59
disbelief wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whether or not React's goal is to cater to beginners doesn't make the argument any less valid. Also React doesn't equal JSX. The React docs also mention how to do things without JSX. Maybe it's the article's title that has understandably rankled some people by seemingly maligning JSX. However, I think it's a very valid concern to have when ramping up a team that's unfamiliar with JS and React.

It doesn't make it less valid, but "is JSX bad" has been done to death. It's been the subject of Medium posts like OP since I started using it in 2014. If you're "ramping up a team that's unfamiliar with JS and React," maybe you should be deciding whether to hire somebody experienced with JS and React instead of deciding whether or not to use JSX.

Agreed, the title was link bait done to death.

I'm not in the situation of ramping up a team unfamiliar as the author was. But it sounds like he was experienced with JS and React himself. Or are you suggesting he should replace his team with people more familiar with JS+React?

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