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Why I don't miss React: a story about using the platform

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Re: Why I don't miss React: a story about using the platform

#191

Post by robertlagrant »

claviska wrote: post #64
zelly wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're using a framework like lit-html as the author recommends, it will replace the string every update. Most people will prefer that way since it's more ergonomic and similar to React. You could do imperative DOM updates, but that'd be like going back in time to jQuery.

This is false. It does not replace the entire string, but uses a template literal to identify which changes need to be made before selectively updating the DOM. This video is a few years old, but the core concepts remain the same. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Io6JjgckHbg

Wow, that's a pretty compelling video. I guess they all are, but I like the use of modern web standards.

Re: Why I don't miss React: a story about using the platform

#192

Post by protocontrol »

semiquaver wrote: post #127
jrochkind1 wrote: post #62

I admit I don't really understand the web components/cusotm elements "story". (I'm not even totally sure the right terminology, or what OP is talking about specifically). Are these now useable on any contemporary browser? Or do you use some kind of polyfill? Anyone have a good from-zero tutorial for the approach OP is talking about?

Yes, they are usable without polyfills in any modern browser. The general idea is that you can register new element types whose behavior is defined in JavaScript classes. They interact with the rest of the DOM in the same way other HTML elements do: by emitting and handling events. They can also maintain a “shadow DOM” with its own HTML subtree and CSS scope, so that you can make complex elements whose internal state…

Hi. Sorry I couldn't parse that without a specific example. In which typical use cases should I create new element types?

Re: Why I don't miss React: a story about using the platform

#193

Post by megous »

brundolf wrote: post #52
zelly wrote: post #49

The problem with Web Components is it's slower than React or other vDOM implementations. Also everything is a string. To re-render, you have to manipulate the innerHTML--usually replacing the string every update. To pass a prop to a component in a modular way, you have to pass a string attribute (e.g. something like ). Even though v8 is extremely fast at string operations, it's just not a good practice and doesn't sc…

> Web Components is it's slower than React or other vDOM implementations > To re-render, you have to manipulate the innerHTML--usually replacing the string every update "Usually" is relative, I guess, but nothing's stopping you from using the imperative DOM APIs to update the component's contents; I daresay this would be the typical thing to do. These APIs will be just as performant as anything else out there. What y…

You can use DOM node properties instead of attributes, when working with custom elements from JS. No seraialization/deserialization to/from string there.

Re: Why I don't miss React: a story about using the platform

#194

Post by djrockstar1 »

nicoburns wrote: post #70
zelly wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

RxJS aka the reason so many websites take 100MB of memory nowadays Don't use it

It fairness you can do reactive data without RxJS. For example by using the vanilla web socket API. Agree that RxJS is best avoided though.

I got into RxJS cause I had to deal with an Angular project a few months ago, what's wrong with it?

Re: Why I don't miss React: a story about using the platform

#195

Post by otikik »

samhw wrote: post #48
otikik wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> of the frameworks you dislike so much This is totally uncalled for. He's not attacking you. He's explaining a tradeoff, very reasonably. > I would even say that if this is not a core part of your product, you are simply wasting time and resources. I find especially interesting that this phrase can be used to defend both sides of the argument. If you are building a highly rich application, chances are that using a f…

Their comment is perfectly reasonable and measured. I don't think anything in it is 'uncalled for'. Your own comment is a confusingly ironically ill-tempered response.

The phrase “The frameworks that you dislike so much” is not an argument. It’s a characterisation. It implies that the OP is blinded by his own personal preferences, and that his arguments have no weight because of that.

Imagine if I had started my answer with “Since you love frameworks so much, then…”. That would have been a similar mischaracterisation on my part (equally uncalled for, since I don’t know the other person enough to make such judgement)

Re: Why I don't miss React: a story about using the platform

#196

Post by azeirah »

LAC-Tech wrote: post #150
wrnr wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've come to the conclusion that web components (with or without shadow roots) are not the best "elementary particle" to build a webapp out of. Most of the time you want simple divs and sometimes you want custom-tag. The important thing is to have a setup where you can quickly promote a component into a web component proper. I think solid.js has a nice solution this, where you just call a function that wraps the comp…

What's the threshold for you, where something needs to be a web component? Honestly I just like the idea of making my own HTML tags and being able to do more with markup.

I'm thinking of things that satisfy these three criteria

1. Need to be configurable

2. Are meant to be used many times through an application

3. Are not easily built using regular html

For point one, take a loot at input[type="text"] html5 elements for instance. Placeholders, validation, size, stylability, errors.

Similarly, the video tag. Volume, play pause, size, quality, playback speed, compatible formats, much more.

For point two and three, you could for instance make a Login component, to encapsulate your authentication form into a component, but this is easily achieved using regular html forms. Also, you're most likely only going to use it once or twice.

So what are good examples?

A sparkline component, this is a type of an inline graph.

A markdown or html editor component.

Custom interaction or input components. Consider for instance where you're working on an audio mixing application. A rotatableKnob element is an elementary input here.

Re: Why I don't miss React: a story about using the platform

#197

Post by fbn79 »

In my projects I use cycle.js/snabbdom and I'm already following many suggestion of the article (es. form data). My next goal would be to discard snabbdom (and virtualdom) and use custom elements. For that I'm evaluating a library like https://github.com/WebReflection/uhtml and all it's ecosystem of utility

Re: Why I don't miss React: a story about using the platform

#198

Post by porker »

eyelidlessness wrote: post #116
5Qn8mNbc2FNCiVV wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's there to optimize? If you don't use state, it doesn't rerender. If you click a button to add another element for example, it does exactly that. If you have a reactive variable in your HTML and update it it rerenders that part only. What's there to optimize further?

Depending on the complexity of your computations and state, what you just described can basically become unusable. For example, an app I work on implements a spec which: - Models state as an arbitrary DAG - With arbitrarily deep dependency chains - Which may trigger dependent nodes based on only subsets of their state - Based on computations of arbitrary XPath expressions, sometimes containing non-native extensions;…

Would love to know what the app does. From the mentions of xpath all I can think is "visual xml editor"?

Re: Why I don't miss React: a story about using the platform

#199

Post by BatteryMountain »

_pdp_ wrote: post #8

If all you need is a couple of basic forms and some basic interaction, you can do it all with vanilla JS but let's not kid ourselves. This will not allow you to build very rich apps without implementing a significant chunk of the frameworks you dislike so much. In fact, I would even say that if this is not a core part of your product, you are simply wasting time and resources. There is a huge amount of man-hours pour…

I've been down this path.

I've built my own framework once out of frustration, thinking typescript will make it easy... after a while I realized that I was just rebuilding chunks of existing frameworks and most likely not in the best way. Webtech is really messy to begin with, typescript didn't really save me. So I stopped. Sure it was nice to know how to build your own viewstack, navigation and state management and how to some newer html5 features, but it really was not the way to go. Vue js seems to be closest match to the way my mind works and built a very crippled version of it minus all the good tooling and plugins. I was also influenced by Knockout and Wpf/C#, so it had some similarities of what I used to do in those. I honestly do not like the way react works or the way it wants me to work, it feels extremely messy too (syntax and project structure)! I get the same feeling from react that I got from own crappy framework!

So anyone reading this, I encourage you to build your own frameworks, but think very carefully if you need it in production and can support it in the long term. Try to keep emotion/ego out of the decision.

Re: Why I don't miss React: a story about using the platform

#200

Post by bshimmin »

ng12 wrote: post #168
hirvi74 wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This will not allow you to build very rich apps without implementing a significant chunk of the frameworks you dislike so much I am currently working on an app at work that wants SPA functionality, but they won't let me use any of the frameworks. Tons of vanilla JS and Jquery. I am sure what I have written is probably considered a crime against humanity in some place. Does it work? Yes. Is it an elegant and maintai…

I feel you. I remember the old days of trying to build SPAs in jQuery and they were dark ones.

I actually have quite happy memories of working with Backbone and jQuery - there were obviously all manner of problems, but everything was quite easy to understand and a lot less magical. Apparently this was in 2012 - how time flies! - so I imagine rose-tinted spectacles must be in full effect here!
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