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Web Components Eliminate JavaScript Framework Lock-In

jakelazaroff.com

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Re: Web Components Eliminate JavaScript Framework Lock-In

#71

Post by QuadmasterXLII »

menssen wrote: post #39
dbingham wrote: post #6

One of the linked articles [1] makes an interesting claim that feels like a reach to me, but I'd be interested in hearing HN's take on it: > At this point React is legacy technology, like Angular. Lots of people are still using it, but nobody can quite remember why. The decision-makers in organisations who chose to build everything with React have long since left. People starting new projects who still decide to buil…

"Lots of people are still using it, but nobody can quite remember why." I can remember why. This, and every other article I've ever read arguing to replace React with Web Components, completely misunderstands the point of React. It isn't about JSX. It isn't about encapsulation. It isn't about reusability. It is about enabling a design pattern where *the user interface is a pure functional transformation of the applic…

With modern browsers, "completely re-output the entire user interface on every state change" is kinda viable. I recently wrote a trebuchet simulator app (hastingsgreer.github.io/jstreb) without a framework. instead I wrote a "rebuild UI" function that I call on every new state, and the user experience is super snappy

Re: Web Components Eliminate JavaScript Framework Lock-In

#72

Post by paulddraper »

robin_reala wrote: post #31
dbingham wrote: post #6

One of the linked articles [1] makes an interesting claim that feels like a reach to me, but I'd be interested in hearing HN's take on it: > At this point React is legacy technology, like Angular. Lots of people are still using it, but nobody can quite remember why. The decision-makers in organisations who chose to build everything with React have long since left. People starting new projects who still decide to buil…

React “won” because Facebook spent three years flying devrel to every web conference on earth to persuade other people that Facebook’s problem space was applicable to small agencies. Back in reality, React is slow and massively overbuilt for the majority of stuff that most people are building. If you played around with Web Components a long time ago then you probably played with the v0 spec, which was somewhat differ…

!!!

If React won, it was precisely because it was not "overbuilt."

It was simpler (deliberately) than Backbone, Angular, Vue, Svelte, etc.

You can implement a React clone in a few hundred lines, a la Preact.

Re: Web Components Eliminate JavaScript Framework Lock-In

#73

Post by mattlondon »

dbingham wrote: post #6

One of the linked articles [1] makes an interesting claim that feels like a reach to me, but I'd be interested in hearing HN's take on it: > At this point React is legacy technology, like Angular. Lots of people are still using it, but nobody can quite remember why. The decision-makers in organisations who chose to build everything with React have long since left. People starting new projects who still decide to buil…

Would anyone pick react these days, if they did not already use it/know it/think-it-is-what-they-should-use-because-everyone-else-does?

I think that is the point. The original "pitch" for react in my mind was that it was lightweight and simple. I don't think you can say that any more, and I think a lot of rough edges have been identified (e.g. hooks fiasco, app state management, dependency-hell etc to name just 3) after years of use.

It's the same cycle that always happens. Old thing ossifies and grows fat overtime trying to be all things to all people. Then some new thing appears that starts with a clean slate and no prior expectations that proves popular as a result

Re: Web Components Eliminate JavaScript Framework Lock-In

#74

Post by vitaflo »

wayfinder wrote: post #14
dbingham wrote: post #6

One of the linked articles [1] makes an interesting claim that feels like a reach to me, but I'd be interested in hearing HN's take on it: > At this point React is legacy technology, like Angular. Lots of people are still using it, but nobody can quite remember why. The decision-makers in organisations who chose to build everything with React have long since left. People starting new projects who still decide to buil…

As someone who does remember why because they've been building sites since the 90s, it's because the React team created a preprocessor (JSX) to let you embed HTML tags in JavaScript. This fixed the problem that other languages like Java, Python, etc. don't have because those languages has assemblies/packages so they can put HTML templates in separate files and load them in your app. There is zero standard way to do t…

100% agree. Like you I’ve been building sites since the mid 90s and always was pulling my hair out at all the convoluted ways we would attempt to handle HTML in these JS frameworks. As someone who knows HTML and CSS and vanilla JS, as soon as I saw React all I could think of when I saw JSX was “finally!”.

Yeah it’s another framework with its own quirks but it lets me think about the UI in the same way I’ve thought about it for 25 years. For someone like me that’s a godsend.

Re: Web Components Eliminate JavaScript Framework Lock-In

#75

Post by reidjs »

preommr wrote: post #43

Web components are a half-baked solution. It only becomes useful with another framework (even if it's very lightweight) like lit. At which point I might as well use vue/react/svelte since I am already brining in a library. Tech like preact is really lightweight as well, and given the popularity of react, is enough to offset any benefits web components have. I would really like it if we reached a point where a web pro…

I use them for a basic website (no build step) for things like navigation components and page templates. They are great for that, but not much else in my experience. Once you have a complex UI or multiple devs on a project it’s probably better to just use a full framework

Re: Web Components Eliminate JavaScript Framework Lock-In

#76

Post by metadaemon »

switchbak wrote: post #69

I haven't been in the frontend world for many years now, but I come from the mid-90's world of GUI development / game engines / old school desktop stuff. I look at this stuff, and just think how sad it is that we haven't progressed beyond the state of gluing together freakin low level divs and spans within some JS code with callbacks galore. For some reason I thought we'd have made it beyond that by 2023, and we coul…

It's a very complex problem to solve and I think a lot of people need to accept that. There will never be a simple solution with a low learning curve that's actually performant for non-trivial applications without a fundamental shift in browser technology.

Re: Web Components Eliminate JavaScript Framework Lock-In

#77

Post by nightski »

zelphirkalt wrote: post #34
wayfinder wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who does remember why because they've been building sites since the 90s, it's because the React team created a preprocessor (JSX) to let you embed HTML tags in JavaScript. This fixed the problem that other languages like Java, Python, etc. don't have because those languages has assemblies/packages so they can put HTML templates in separate files and load them in your app. There is zero standard way to do t…

Interesting. Yet I find that React HTML—that is not actually HTML, but a look-alike, a dialect if you want—to be exactly what I dislike about React. That is because it still encourages people to put JS in their HTML in their JS in their ... And we are almost back to crazy PHP land of "I treat HTML as a string and blend everything together into one big lump.", instead of using a templating engine, that treats HTML in…

Except it's not half baked. Because guess what - now you need a new template language that supports constructs like conditionals, loops, etc... You basically end up implementing a half-baked version of javascript with an unfamiliar syntax. Even worse they need to interact with state. Many template engines introduce some sort of "data binding" abomination which is a complex way of saying how you want the state to interact with the view.

React is simple. Here is your data, and here is a function that transforms that data into a view.

Templates are terrible, and that is a hill I am willing to die on.

Re: Web Components Eliminate JavaScript Framework Lock-In

#78

Post by davedx »

dbingham wrote: post #6

One of the linked articles [1] makes an interesting claim that feels like a reach to me, but I'd be interested in hearing HN's take on it: > At this point React is legacy technology, like Angular. Lots of people are still using it, but nobody can quite remember why. The decision-makers in organisations who chose to build everything with React have long since left. People starting new projects who still decide to buil…

React isn't legacy technology. What a perfidious statement.

I can easily justify the reasons I still use React, but I can't be bothered writing it out every time some gimmicky front-end tech hits HN.

Re: Web Components Eliminate JavaScript Framework Lock-In

#80

Post by agloe_dreams »

switchbak wrote: post #69

I haven't been in the frontend world for many years now, but I come from the mid-90's world of GUI development / game engines / old school desktop stuff. I look at this stuff, and just think how sad it is that we haven't progressed beyond the state of gluing together freakin low level divs and spans within some JS code with callbacks galore. For some reason I thought we'd have made it beyond that by 2023, and we coul…

The problem is CSS. CSS is so freaking complex with millions of possible outcomes. https://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/all-properties.en.html

Building a declarative UI that compiles to that sort of declaration means building that from scratch. We do currently work like that though. React isn't that far and web components built into an element of that.

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