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React I love you, but you're bringing me down

marmelab.com

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Re: React I love you, but you're bringing me down

#31

Post by nawgz »

kansface wrote: post #17
throwaway284534 wrote: post #10

As a developer who’s been working with React since the beta, I can confidently say that the author is speaking the truth. Especially so near the end of the article where they can’t seem to quit React. For all the annoyances of Hooks, they really are a godsend when it comes to composing state. And refs do indeed suck, but they sucked even more with class based components. I can’t tell you how many times I was able to…

That’s the thing though - hooks aren’t JS. They don’t allow for control flow. Hooks are a language that superficially looks like JS. I’m with you on not inventing new languages, and I wish that React didn’t step so far off that path itself…

> hooks aren't JS

This is so silly. Hooks are literally hooks into a scheduling algorithm you are at the mercy of. That scheduling algorithm is pure JS. Of course you don't have classical control flow in someone else's scheduler.

The key users are referring to when talking about "JS vs magic" is that React is just constructing objects and invoking functions, with known semantics, whereas Solid and Svelte are auto-magic-reactive systems without clear semantics rising from the choice to do even more things in their internal black boxes than React, such as never re-rendering components, dark compiler magic on syntax that doesn't naturally map to a JS tree, and other such things

Re: React I love you, but you're bringing me down

#33

Post by rglover »

pc86 wrote: post #20
rglover wrote: post #16

Come to the dark side, we have cooookies https://github.com/cheatcode/joystick

Tangentially related: https://xkcd.com/927/

The number of people who have sent me this exact meme for daring to offer an alternative is quite illuminating of why it's so hard to make progress. Not picking on you, but dogmatic thinking is why OPs article even exists.

Don't substitute memes for thinking. Evaluate what I've built on its actual merits.

Re: React I love you, but you're bringing me down

#34

Post by zero_shift »

nophunphil wrote: post #18
throwaway284534 wrote: post #10

As a developer who’s been working with React since the beta, I can confidently say that the author is speaking the truth. Especially so near the end of the article where they can’t seem to quit React. For all the annoyances of Hooks, they really are a godsend when it comes to composing state. And refs do indeed suck, but they sucked even more with class based components. I can’t tell you how many times I was able to…

I’m also a developer and tech lead who’s been working with React since the beta. Agreed with all your points about React. I’m not sure I would say Svelte and Solid are a farther step off the “just JavaScript” path than React given JSX though. I haven’t tried Solid, but Svelte has already paid considerable dividends for our team. Frontend feature development pace is faster, the code is generally leaner, and the develo…

> I haven’t tried Solid, but Svelte has already paid considerable dividends for our team. Frontend feature development pace is faster, the code is generally leaner, and the developers love working with it.

Is that just down to Svelte, though? Or is it the greenfield effect? Projects always fly quickly at first, when the code is fresh and unconstrained, and you're building the basics.

My concern would be when things get complicated and you have to debug Svelte's binding magic - and I have very bad memories doing that in Angular and Knockout.

Re: React I love you, but you're bringing me down

#35

Post by 11235813213455 »

Salut Marmelab

The best way we found is a custom useForm hook (simple to code, using useState's):

    const { submit, getProps, isLoading, error } = useForm({ onSubmit: cb, initialValue: {} /*optional*/ });

    return (
very flexible, you can use other wrappers than form or input

react-query is another super useful lib, you could use useMutation() for implementing useForm actually

Re: React I love you, but you're bringing me down

#36

Post by mejutoco »

nawgz wrote: post #31
kansface wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s the thing though - hooks aren’t JS. They don’t allow for control flow. Hooks are a language that superficially looks like JS. I’m with you on not inventing new languages, and I wish that React didn’t step so far off that path itself…

> hooks aren't JS This is so silly. Hooks are literally hooks into a scheduling algorithm you are at the mercy of. That scheduling algorithm is pure JS. Of course you don't have classical control flow in someone else's scheduler. The key users are referring to when talking about "JS vs magic" is that React is just constructing objects and invoking functions, with known semantics, whereas Solid and Svelte are auto-mag…

But hooks need to be named "useX" and have restrictions on where to be called (that a program detects). While they are of js clearly they are not "normal" js functions either.

While I use hooks without problem, I also feel like it is an invented mini-language with a lot of extra quirks. Maybe the problem is js does not map elegantly to some of these functional concepts without a good type system.

Re: React I love you, but you're bringing me down

#37

Post by chimen »

throwaway284534 wrote: post #10

As a developer who’s been working with React since the beta, I can confidently say that the author is speaking the truth. Especially so near the end of the article where they can’t seem to quit React. For all the annoyances of Hooks, they really are a godsend when it comes to composing state. And refs do indeed suck, but they sucked even more with class based components. I can’t tell you how many times I was able to…

Why does it have to be in the path of "it's just Javascript"? I don't understand this.

Re: React I love you, but you're bringing me down

#38

Post by zero_shift »

nawgz wrote: post #31
kansface wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s the thing though - hooks aren’t JS. They don’t allow for control flow. Hooks are a language that superficially looks like JS. I’m with you on not inventing new languages, and I wish that React didn’t step so far off that path itself…

> hooks aren't JS This is so silly. Hooks are literally hooks into a scheduling algorithm you are at the mercy of. That scheduling algorithm is pure JS. Of course you don't have classical control flow in someone else's scheduler. The key users are referring to when talking about "JS vs magic" is that React is just constructing objects and invoking functions, with known semantics, whereas Solid and Svelte are auto-mag…

Indeed, part of svelte's whole "magic" is to interpret labelled blocks beginning with "$" as a hint to do all manner of AOT codegen

Re: React I love you, but you're bringing me down

#39

Post by egeozcan »

nophunphil wrote: post #18
throwaway284534 wrote: post #10

As a developer who’s been working with React since the beta, I can confidently say that the author is speaking the truth. Especially so near the end of the article where they can’t seem to quit React. For all the annoyances of Hooks, they really are a godsend when it comes to composing state. And refs do indeed suck, but they sucked even more with class based components. I can’t tell you how many times I was able to…

I’m also a developer and tech lead who’s been working with React since the beta. Agreed with all your points about React. I’m not sure I would say Svelte and Solid are a farther step off the “just JavaScript” path than React given JSX though. I haven’t tried Solid, but Svelte has already paid considerable dividends for our team. Frontend feature development pace is faster, the code is generally leaner, and the develo…

I'm also a TL (which makes me a teaspoon here in Germany, which I like more than the tech lead title). I understand how the development can be faster with Svelte, but ecosystem argument really hits home. You'd get to 80% with Svelte perhaps much faster than React, but that missing library for, say, drag-and-drop makes that last 20% itself plus "hey let's develop our own drag-and-drop library in-house which should be easy and opinionated and maybe it gets open-sourced" (it will be hard, with crazy high budget, as it will try to cover many use-cases you will never have and it still won't be open-sourced because now it's your "core competency" and five months later someone will realize your component has terrible a11y and etc. and one million bug fixes later it is a monster code-base that none wants to touch and maybe rewrite? oh here we go again).
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