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

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

#61

Post by Waterluvian »

Been using React as the view library for 8 years worth of applications that real-time manage fleets of robots worldwide (think config CRUD app + Google Maps + Dashboard + live camera/lidar views + joystick controls).

I generally empathize and see what a lot of authors are saying when they have these commentaries. But I just cannot get past the reality that for all its issues and things worth complaining about, React has never really been "in my way" when it comes to the only goal I really care about: shipping a maintainable product on-time.

I think that comparing a 10 year old library to much younger libraries can be useful in some cases, but is still apples to oranges, given that younger library still has to survive growing up and not having the same claimed fate.

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

#62

Post by pgamble »

Relatively new react developer here (still learning in fact!), I liked this article although it shook me a bit and made me wonder "am I wasting time with some of this stuff? maybe I should be looking ahead to the next 'best framework'". Id be interested in hearing people's thoughts: what would be best to learn for maximum applicability in the ~3 year timeframe?

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

#63

Post by nonethewiser »

elbac wrote: post #50
nonethewiser wrote: post #46

I must be the only person in the world who likes class components in React. Sure, it's often overkill and a functional component does the same thing with less code. Use a functional component in these cases. But if you're doing something more complicated then stop treating class components like the fucking devil. They have their place.

Did you use to work in Java?

No

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

#64

Post by eatonphil »

egeozcan wrote: post #39
nophunphil wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What is a teaspoon?

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

#65

Post by Spivak »

mejutoco wrote: post #36
nawgz wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> have restrictions on where to be called

This is because hooks are just next() calls on an iterator. Is it magic and entirely because the devs thought it was more beautiful than having to pass a key like state = useState("state", 0)? Absolutely. Does it transcend JS, no.

   hooks = [1, 2, 3, 4]
   
   isOne = next(hooks)
   isTwo = next(hooks)

   if flipcoin()
      isThree = next(hooks)

   # oops, it's sometimes 3
   isFour = next(hooks)

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

#66

Post by goatlover »

elbac wrote: post #50
nonethewiser wrote: post #46

I must be the only person in the world who likes class components in React. Sure, it's often overkill and a functional component does the same thing with less code. Use a functional component in these cases. But if you're doing something more complicated then stop treating class components like the fucking devil. They have their place.

Did you use to work in Java?

Coming from Ruby and Python, I also prefer class components to hooks. I had to deal with hooks enough in Drupal/PHP which is in the process of deprecating them in favor of Symfony classes.

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

#67

Post by phailhaus »

bornfreddy wrote: post #52
nonethewiser wrote: post #46

I must be the only person in the world who likes class components in React. Sure, it's often overkill and a functional component does the same thing with less code. Use a functional component in these cases. But if you're doing something more complicated then stop treating class components like the fucking devil. They have their place.

No, you're not the only one. Apart from useState, which is elegant, I hate others with passion. How can a replacement for lifecycle methods be called useEffect? Seriously? Great article, couldn't agree more with them.

> How can a replacement for lifecycle methods be called useEffect? Seriously?

Yes, seriously. Have you used it for more complex components? You can split your effects across multiple useEffects, and have a guarantee that they run completely independently of each other (especially since you know what their dependencies are). Compare that to lifecycle methods: you only have one per component. All your effects concerned with setup have to be piled into the same function, and their associated teardowns have to be elsewhere in another method. How do you audit a behavior's logic? How do you reuse that behavior in another component? It's not easy, and you can cause weird bugs depending on the order in which you run them.

Compare that to useEffect. Setup and teardown in the same function, which allows it to focus on just one behavior. And if you need to, it can be trivially pulled out into its own hook and reused across all your components.

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

#68

Post by afavour »

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…

> they personally feel a step too far off the path of “it’s just JavaScript.”

That’s more or less exactly what everyone said about JSX when it first arrived. Now people don’t really consider it. I suspect we might end up feeling the same way about Svelte’s language additions if they ever become commonplace.

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