Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

An experienced Javascript developer’s account of learning React

medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 157 posts

Re: An experienced Javascript developer’s account of learning React

#121

Post by lawik »

ckorhonen wrote: post #85

Switching to React definitely has a learning curve, especially if you are coming from old-stool JavaScript or just not used to some of the concepts in React or Redux themselves. That said, once you get your head around it things start falling into place. We're recently built a React Native app and I feel the benefits it brings to cross-platform development make that ramp-up worthwhile. A single iOS and Android codeba…

I saw a fascinating talk on Redux, I like the idea of how it manages state and the whole event sourced approach to that.

I've repeatedly tried to get Redux going with either React or Vue but have found it surprisingly hard. Many outdated seed projects and installation instructions made it somewhat painful.

I've played a bit with React from the more recent create-react-app and that got me started with some of it. I haven't been sold yet, I realize that I want something to cause the events and update the DOM but I haven't been sold on why React is best for that yet.

Always annoying when you try to approach some tech and have a hard bounce off of it.

Re: An experienced Javascript developer’s account of learning React

#122

Post by lawik »

sotojuan wrote: post #25
kasbah wrote: post #20

I am confused why people think Redux is complicated. Maybe you were trying to use React-Redux? Redux itself seems incredibly simple to me, so simple that I sometimes wonder if I need a library for the functionality at all. This "Redux in a nutshell" sums up the simplicity nicely I think: https://gist.github.com/MarcoWorms/30758235f05faec844b8c06ce...

I've had the same experience. It took me about a week to "get" Redux as a new-ish dev back a year or so ago. Why do you think people have trouble with it?

I watched a talk at a meetup on Redux. Loved the idea. Tried to try it out with React or Vue and had a lot of trouble getting going. I'm still fond of Redux as a concept but I've mostly had trouble trying to get the rest of my needs met. I'll try again at some point.

Re: An experienced Javascript developer’s account of learning React

#123

Post by sotojuan »

ashark wrote: post #59
NikolaeVarius wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but the question that always lingered in my head was, how it even possible to mess up a text box? It was a simple input form that crashed the browser by taking up all its memory. I could literally see my browser GC spike during every single keystroke. If it's possible screw up the most basic element of a website, I shudder to think what other simple elements are out there that are horribly written

Asana (ugh, not my choice) once prompted me for feedback. The whole thing's performance is always worst-in-class god-awful, but the feedback textarea lagged nearly a full second before registering each keystroke. A textarea. A textarea . My feedback was... a little mean. Having read some of the stuff about their NIH-induced in-house framework I suspect they've got several things hanging around in it that belong on Ac…

> I hate the modern web so very much

It's worse when making SPAs is my job :-(

Re: An experienced Javascript developer’s account of learning React

#124

Post by jaequery »

im going to just say whats on my chest.

it makes me wonder if react devs who thinks react is the greatest thing since sliced bread are somewhat new to web development (less than 2-3 years or so). because im sure those who inherently know, would find that vuejs is just a superior framework (sans native). there will always be new frameworks that comes out and some will be better than the last. and vue to me is leading the forefront and does things that makes sense for web development. once vue releases native, i think there arent many reasons to use react if vue is available.

when ppl say react is the best or that its for complex apps makes me shake my head, as those who believe that may be just naive or dont have much experience to make up their mind.

experience over time, leads you to strive for patterns and elegance, and unfortunately react doesnt have that which makes it feel there is a bit of immaturity in the framework. this is why i wouldnt be surprised if many if the react fans are the way they are in their stance.

its just my two cents from an old js dev who have seen through over 15 years, so your views maybe different from me, but should be similar to those who knows what im talking about.

Re: An experienced Javascript developer’s account of learning React

#125

Post by lawik »

vmasto wrote: post #40

I was very intrigued by the title: Things nobody will tell you about React.js Immediately had high hopes that someone is going to try and give a well researched, novel critique that maybe can spur out some constructive conversation. And then, sadly, the author goes on to write exactly what countless other articles have already covered and discussed to the death for years now. "HTML in JS", "JSX is bad", "Redux is com…

I've had really bad experiences trying to get going with React but I just found this article ranty. I was also expecting something more interesting. No feeling of depth to the analysis, just "I did not like this and now I will complain about it".

I'm guessing english is not the authors first language so I won't dwell on it but I found it somewhat hard to follow.

Re: An experienced Javascript developer’s account of learning React

#126

Post by vladgur »

olavgg wrote: post #99
titobrown wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Replies like this are always interesting to me. It seems like you're saying these "overengineered" JS frameworks are useless, but I can't believe thats the case. You must just be saying they don't fit your use case, correct? If so you are not getting that point across very clearly. Otherwise are you honestly saying you can't see the use case for these frameworks? You would rebuild Facebook with static HTML and a spri…

There is a story called The Emperor's New Clothes, the morale of that story is that you should question your decisions and not blindly believe what other people say, even if you look up to them. When I saw the "light" about React, me and friend were coding our own e-commerce system each for fun. Him with Ruby and Rails and jQuery, me with Grails and React. When we implemented the shopping cart, I wrote like 200 lines…

You are comparing apple to oranges. Why use react or angular or vue with fun hobbyist projects meant for a team of one developer that is going to throw that code out and move on to another hobby.

In the real world you're going to have to come up with a homegrown vanilla approach for all the things that a good framework does for you: escaping user input, provide setup and cleanup hooks for your DOM manipulations, maintain state and I'm not even touching routing because you seem to be focused on server-rendered apps although the community does prefer hybrid apps that start out server-rendered and load more data while the user is browsing.

I've worked in companies that started out homegrown and it's a bitch to maintain, evolve and for that matter teach to new hires.

Consistency matters on teams

Re: An experienced Javascript developer’s account of learning React

#127

Post by platz »

zepolen wrote: post #113
platz wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

no, the point of the template engine is not to push all the logic into the templates. as you say you still handle the state yourself. the template render just skips the messy output building step, which for many cases is all you need

I don't think you understand what OP is talking about.

I think you're expecting a simple templating engine to do more than I'm claiming it's doing.

Re: An experienced Javascript developer’s account of learning React

#128

Post by vladgur »

izacus wrote: post #41
wavefunction wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Angular/Angular4 is a joy to develop with, so that's too bad you're limiting yourselves artificially. We have groovy in my stack at work and everyone despises it. Fortunately that's a legacy we're moving away from.

But is it joy for customers to use the stuff you wrote in it? So many of these opinions always focus on the developers having fun instead of wondering what experience is for the user and maintainers.

It's a valid question that has nothing to do with a tool/framework and everything to do with product goal and time/resources

Re: An experienced Javascript developer’s account of learning React

#129

Post by bobwaycott »

virmundi wrote: post #115
bollockitis wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, what does everyone despise about Groovy?

It's not the new hotness anymore. Scala came along. The author of Groovey says Scalia is better. It's also semidynamic. So if you don't like that, you won't like that (tautology of the day). Updated for Scalia to Scala.

Do you mean Scala? I got a good a chuckle imagining the late Justice Scalia here. :)

Re: An experienced Javascript developer’s account of learning React

#130

Post by TomMarius »

izacus wrote: post #41
wavefunction wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Angular/Angular4 is a joy to develop with, so that's too bad you're limiting yourselves artificially. We have groovy in my stack at work and everyone despises it. Fortunately that's a legacy we're moving away from.

But is it joy for customers to use the stuff you wrote in it? So many of these opinions always focus on the developers having fun instead of wondering what experience is for the user and maintainers.

95% of the time I can significantly improve the user experience thanks to React.
Post reply on HN