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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

#181

Post by deckard1 »

k__ wrote: post #74
phailhaus wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They have their place. How so? There is nothing that a class-based component can do that a hook-based component can't (EDIT: Except for error boundaries). I'd go as far as to say class-based components are strictly inferior because they force you split your behavior logic across lifecycle methods and are not easily composable. I've been able to support much more complex behavior easily with hooks (e.g., connection…

Isn't it also easier to get subtle lifecycle bugs with them, because you can forget one.

I don't know that I agree with that. I recently had to fix a few bugs because some devs forgot, or simply didn't know, that lifecycles still exist.

We have reached a period of time where junior devs exist that did not cut their teeth on class components and have no idea of what the lifecycles are. They don't know how rendering works so they either throw up useless memoization everywhere or they don't bother to think of it.

The complexity of class components did not vanish. It was only swept under the rug. Take useEffect. It's overloaded to hell and back. It does too much and people continue to struggle with it. Another one, useRef. It's not really for refs, per se. You will end up using it for data other than refs because function instance variables aren't a thing. No one knows when to use useLayoutEffect or useCallback.

The fact of the matter is that it's not class components vs. hooks. It's that React's API sucks. It's always sucked. And it continues to suck.

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

#183

Post by zero_shift »

hnrodey wrote: post #116
holistio wrote: post #89

...and that's why I switched to Vue nearly four years ago. Best professional decision I've ever made.

Are you finding much "professional traction" with Vue? I really like Vue and use it for personal projects but React seems to dominate the job postings.

Vue is mostly used in China, where there is a preference for Chinese tech.

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

#184

Post by ericmcer »

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.

Hooks are a natural progression from class components, class components seem more straightforward with all the willMount beforeMount etc. but they trick you into visualizing your component in different states of mounted/rendered/etc. That goes against what React wants to be at its core, which is totally immutable and pure, it isn't mounted or pre/post-render it looks the same whether it is the first render or the 100th. Ultimately I think the mental model of the component as a pure function is superior to juggling the react lifecycle.

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

#185

Post by marcosdumay »

buscoquadnary wrote: post #147
BilalBudhani wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I ditched React soon after they released hooks, mainly because I couldn't relate to the tradeoff React roadmap was taking from there. They went in a different direction from that point onwards, it seem like whatever code you write will become obsolete with the new set of best practices in the next release cycle. More importantly, I realized React is trying to tame Facebook level of problems and hence their design dec…

Step 1: The existing tooling is too clunky, big and a major PITA to work with, Developers spend most of their time fighting their framework and tooling to do simple things. Step 2: Someone gets fed up with this writes a framework that "does things right" and is designed for "simplicity" Step 3: People start loving the new tool because it is so much easier to work with. Step 4: People start to do things the tool wasn'…

> The new tool becomes massive and bloated and overwhelmed with too many features, configurations, and options.

It is almost as if people are not breaking their problems over the correct dimensions.

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

#186

Post by azemetre »

dragonwriter wrote: post #90
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 They literally are. > hooks aren’t JS The code in React executing components relies on hooks running in a consistent order each time the component runs, but the existence of a runtime context that has expectations about side effects (and hooks are side effects) doesn't make it “not javascript”.

Hooks are executed in order as they are defined, isn't that a fundamentally broken design in regards to language spec?

I don't have an opinion, just generally curious because it feels very odd that the order of my functions matter.

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

#187

Post by kristopolous »

throwaway0asd wrote: post #173
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 just use vanilla JS on the front-end just like I do with Node. I have never understood why people find state management challenging. I suppose its because they are stuck in a framework or MVC mindset where everything is a separate component and each must have separate state models that must be referenced frequently and independently. I just put all my state data in one object, save it on each user interaction, and…

I wish I could understand the appeal of react and other frameworks but everytime I interact with them I find them so terrible opaque and frustrating. I've built plenty of things with various frameworks including react[1], maintained, been in team-based development doing it, have github projects that use them with thousands of stars but I think they are brain-damaged terrible ways of doing things that shouldn't exist.

I've given it a fair shake and I wish I could change this opinion. I'm trying not to rant so I'll stop here.

I do a cathartic exercise every time this stuff gets to me at a themed twitter account. It's pure vitriol: https://twitter.com/sisnode

[1] oftentimes I see the anti-react argument as "react sucks which is why I use Y framework". I'm saying they are all(?) a toxic trend that leads to terrible products; more complicated, harder to maintain, aggressively encouraging a glossary of programming antipatterns passing it off as elegance.

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

#188

Post by topspin »

Props to marmelab's react-admin, and the ng-admin that preceded it.

If you need CRUD without adopting some "low code" platform and its half dozen containers full of weird databases, react-admin is a fine choice.

I have wondered what svelte-admin would look like.

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

#189

Post by jd24 »

pgamble wrote: post #62

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?

Depends on what you are learning for. If it is for a job, then react has the most openings by a large margin and will likely stay like that for a while.

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

#190

Post by corytheboyd »

I've worked in a few roughly-the-same-size (~50 engineers) web development shops. It's always the same. Doesn't matter if it's React, Angular, Class based components, Functional components with hooks, Just Some HTML, PHP, Rails views, etc.

The frontend just collects the cruft of a product organization changing course very frequently. There are always a dozen half-finished fix-the-world ideas conflicting with each other, half-finished move-to-new-framework initiatives.

I just mean to say that when I hear "it's because React" or "it's because rails views", any other of the infinite variations of this, I kind of just tune out. Some part of your organizations chaos is going to reflect in code, and honestly I'd rather it be in a big ball of frontend than in the data models, infrastructure, etc.

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