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The rise of React

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Re: The rise of React

#21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, as a programmer I love react. It fits into my mental models of composability and state management.

Funny for me state management was pretty simple until React came along and made it asynchronous.

Async never bothered me because I was using it ever since I first started working.

Re: The rise of React

#22
post #2

Props to the people who have been managing the project. I have done a lot of React in the last 6 years and have never been frustrated with their decisions, which is very rare. I think beyond the technical aspects, the way React evolved over time was really on point. The roadmap has always been very well designed and the literature around new features and deprecated ones top notch. The way React is used has changed co…

> I have done a lot of React in the last 6 years and have never been frustrated with their decisions, which is very rare.

Same, but this is also why I feel burnt by create-react-app. There's so many important features the team has simply decided it won't support. One of the biggest issues with the React ecosystem is that there's nothing in between training wheels (CRA) and a motorcycle (rolling your own config). Maybe there's an opportunity for a new project there.

Re: The rise of React

#23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> With every other framework, even though the core framework is capable enough, it feels like I have to reinvent wheels, axles, and more. Curious, does that apply to Angular/Ember?

Agreed. As someone unfamiliar with the JS ecosystem I find React to be difficult because it appears just as a UI library. I have to then choose between dozens of competing options for everything (local state management, API calls, forms, URL routing, etc) where as frameworks such as Ember (not sure about Angular) seem to provide those features out of the box using a consistent API as well as some structure. I guess R…

> I guess React is powerful in the sense that it will allow you to do this that wouldn't fit well with the structure and way of doing things of Ember/Angular, but that seems to be a relatively rare problem.

I think that might depend on what you're trying to do. I'm guessing as you say you are unfamiliar with the JS ecosystem, that you were trying to do something relatively simple.

As a full-stack developer who does a lot of front-end dev, my experience has been that hitting against the limitations of Angular/Ember* is exceedingly common. Not "every feature I try to implement common". But "every project has 2 or 3 features that need the flexibility" common. This is enough to make avoiding that pain very appealing.

I haven't had the same problems with Laravel or Django (haven't used Rails). And I think a key part of that is that Laravel/Django are still "just PHP/Python". Angular tries to put the proprietary string templating language in charge of everything. Which is painful.

Also: Picking libraries is a skill you can develop. You learn to google for the N most popular libraries for a given task. Then search for blog posts comparing advantages and disadvantages. And check for recent activity / outstanding issues. It only takes a couple of hours, and you get a library which is more tailored to your use case.

* I haven't actually use Ember. Only Angular.

Re: The rise of React

#24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> With every other framework, even though the core framework is capable enough, it feels like I have to reinvent wheels, axles, and more. Curious, does that apply to Angular/Ember?

Agreed. As someone unfamiliar with the JS ecosystem I find React to be difficult because it appears just as a UI library. I have to then choose between dozens of competing options for everything (local state management, API calls, forms, URL routing, etc) where as frameworks such as Ember (not sure about Angular) seem to provide those features out of the box using a consistent API as well as some structure. I guess R…

> There is no "batteries included" framework equivalent to Django, Rails or Laravel.

The closest to those for JavaScript is Nest[0]

[0] https://docs.nestjs.com/

Re: The rise of React

#25
post #7
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience that separation of concerns was fake. 15+ years of webdev and I ain’t ever seen a redesign that doesn’t fundamentally change the layout and business logic. Never seen a spec update to logic that doesn’t also change how things look. The coupling is super tight and always has been.

I meant more in the sense that different people could do different jobs. Non-developers/designers were able to do a lot of the frontend stuff. With the "new" complexity of frontend development that's mostly gone. I've seen it a few times with my own eyes that in teams the 1-5 frontenders specialised in html/css had a really hard time switching to react, at the same time more seasoned developers felt like fish in the…

I’m currently training/mentoring a designer in using React, Tailwind, Markdown and basic CLI tooling (git and yarn). She appreciates the power and expression shes given and is learning quickly and steadily. No prior coding knowledge.

Most of this comes down to getting past the fear of coding/programming. And it is a powerful enabler, even reshapes thinking. She recently came up to me with saying “why should I write this in Word? We have markdown and I bet there is a tool where I can style this and generate a PDF”.

Re: The rise of React

#26
post #22
post #2

Props to the people who have been managing the project. I have done a lot of React in the last 6 years and have never been frustrated with their decisions, which is very rare. I think beyond the technical aspects, the way React evolved over time was really on point. The roadmap has always been very well designed and the literature around new features and deprecated ones top notch. The way React is used has changed co…

> I have done a lot of React in the last 6 years and have never been frustrated with their decisions, which is very rare. Same, but this is also why I feel burnt by create-react-app. There's so many important features the team has simply decided it won't support. One of the biggest issues with the React ecosystem is that there's nothing in between training wheels (CRA) and a motorcycle (rolling your own config). Mayb…

to be honest, Id say the next level abstractions(gatsby and next) fill that role. I can’t think of a SPA alternative though

Re: The rise of React

#27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> With every other framework, even though the core framework is capable enough, it feels like I have to reinvent wheels, axles, and more. Curious, does that apply to Angular/Ember?

Agreed. As someone unfamiliar with the JS ecosystem I find React to be difficult because it appears just as a UI library. I have to then choose between dozens of competing options for everything (local state management, API calls, forms, URL routing, etc) where as frameworks such as Ember (not sure about Angular) seem to provide those features out of the box using a consistent API as well as some structure. I guess R…

Like everything else, start simple. React by itself can do everything you need it to do on the front end.

Re: The rise of React

#28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, as a programmer I love react. It fits into my mental models of composability and state management.

Funny for me state management was pretty simple until React came along and made it asynchronous.

Compared to the updating/rerendering hassle that it solves, this is non-issue.

Re: The rise of React

#29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. As someone unfamiliar with the JS ecosystem I find React to be difficult because it appears just as a UI library. I have to then choose between dozens of competing options for everything (local state management, API calls, forms, URL routing, etc) where as frameworks such as Ember (not sure about Angular) seem to provide those features out of the box using a consistent API as well as some structure. I guess R…

> There is no "batteries included" framework equivalent to Django, Rails or Laravel. The closest to those for JavaScript is Nest[0] [0] https://docs.nestjs.com/

We use Nest. It's great, but it doesn't actually include things like ORM. It has good recipes for TypeORM, but nothing is really included.

Re: The rise of React

#30
post #8

The only reason I choose React today is the immense ecosystem around it. With every other framework, even though the core framework is capable enough, it feels like I have to reinvent wheels, axles, and more.

But react did "reinvent the wheel", and it did it so well that it changed the way frontend development is done. When I look at what we had before, it feels even more innovative because it offered a simple interface to DOM manipulation and it took away all the struggles of doing that with jQuery or vanilla JS. To me it feels like such a simple concept that I'm amazed it took us so long to discover.
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