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If not React, then what?

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Re: If not React, then what?

#121

Post by quantadev »

thesuavefactor wrote: post #78
quantadev wrote: post #20

The people who don't think React (or Vue) is important are the same ones who have never worked on a large project with lots of screen updates and state changes that absolutely cannot be avoided. React is still #1 in popularity, and the most crucial tool for almost any web developer (aside from using TypeScript, instead of plain JS which is also critical for large projects) React is reported to be used by 39.5% of dev…

You can't be more wrong. You're saying that only logic performed on the client side can be considered an application? State can be stored in the server. Screen changes can be done by loading html, it doesn't need a framework. React is far from crucial for web development, but people haven't learned anything else the last decade. Most front end developers these days don't even know what a template engine is, and some…

I wasn't comparing SSR to non-SSR (Server Side Rendering). As long as you can refresh portions of a webpage (or states of GUI elements), after a user action (button click or whatever), that's fine.

However the reason my Dialog Boxes open in a millisecond, and close in a millisecond too, is because I choose to render them locally. I'm not against SSR tho, as a viable concept. That's a different complex discussion where there are trade-offs to consider.

Re: If not React, then what?

#122

Post by bbkane »

tasuki wrote: post #74

If not React, then Elm!

There's a lot to like about Elm, but the tradeoff is that the BDFL (Evan) has essentially abandoned public work on it [0, 1], and the community seems to be shrinking [2].

I personally wouldn't choose it for new projects, and I consider it essentially a brilliant research language (it's inspired a LOT of other UI work).

0: https://elmcraft.org/lore/elm-core-development/

1: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/elm-the-future-of-open...

2: https://reasonableapproximation.net/2024/11/02/elm-community...

Re: If not React, then what?

#123

Post by quantadev »

cyann wrote: post #120
quantadev wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In case I was unclear, I consider Angular dead and obsolete.

Same, anGLuar sounds, for a french speaker, like https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/engluer 1. to birdlime 2. (reflexive) to get bogged down

In case I was unclear, I consider French dead and obsolete.

Re: If not React, then what?

#124

Post by x0x0 »

xcrunner529 wrote: post #77
x0x0 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah, the rest of the article is not insightful either. eg React Native is dismissed in 5 sentences, with no real solution at all given to the basic problem of wanting to have a website and mobile apps without writing your app 3 times. Let alone a website + mobile apps + windows + mac clients. The suggested solutions do not address this need -- eg there's some Apache crap that no one I've heard of uses (it's renamed A…

I think sadly to that point there’s no solution given because there isn’t one. And the ones that promise it (RN) still has you doing tons of platform specific code and in some cases supporting even more platforms than just going native.

I've been at orgs that wrote 3x apps and at orgs that shipped via RN. RN was a significantly superior choice ime. While yes, it wasn't 100% write once, it was pretty good and also avoided some of the ugly single-platform-only bugs I experienced at choice one, eg in core data libs (subtly different validations on data), that made the write 3 apps strategy be more like 4x work.

As for the article, honesty probably would have just had the author write something like: "RN: an unfortunate but maybe your best choice in these circumstances" instead of pretending there's serious alternatives eg the Apache garbage dump.

Re: If not React, then what?

#125

Post by dang »

4ntiq wrote: post #43
simonw wrote: post #37

A fun thing about reading Alex is that you can tell he's had the same arguments over and over again for a decade now and he's frustrated with having to keep on making the same points and getting the exact same responses. Most of the people commenting on this piece won't have read this whole article (it's long, and internet attention spans are short). As a result, you'll find plenty of the comments here were exactly p…

[flagged]

No personal attacks, please.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Edit: since you've been doing this a lot already, I've banned the account. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future.

Re: If not React, then what?

#126

Post by pier25 »

goodoldneon wrote: post #112
pier25 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If React is so great how come Amazon isn't using it in their store? I think last year an Amazon frontend engineer wrote some tweets explaining they tried React and it was too slow. So they keep using Java for SSR and sprinkle vanilla JS. They were still using jQuery until a couple of years ago and probably still are in some parts of their site.

Do not base your company’s tech decisions on FAANG companies unless your company is a FAANG company. Your challenges are likely very different from theirs

You're missing the point of my comment.

Someone is contesting that "frameworkism isn't delivering" when we have objective data to prove that it is in fact not delivering.

The Amazon store is just a good example because there's a lot of data about it, not because it's FAANG.

Re: If not React, then what?

#128

Post by teruakohatu »

shepherdjerred wrote: post #54

You can build a good website in React and you can build a bad website in React. It's easier to build a bad website in React than it is to build a bad website with just plain HTML/CSS.

> It's easier to build a bad website in React than it is to build a bad website with just plain HTML/CSS.

I think many people would argue that it is easier to build a good web app in React than plain HTML/CSS/JS.

Re: If not React, then what?

#129

Post by spankalee »

emmanueloga_ wrote: post #57

I think React is fine, especially when using it mainly for rendering, keeping async stuff out of the components as much as possible. The React API is way nicer to construct DOM trees than using Fragments, creating and appending children elements, concatenating strings to produce HTML, etc. Imagine being able to do this without importing any 3rd party code: const content = html` Hello world! `; // New API: html Tagged…

There is a proposal for JavaScript-based HTML templates: https://github.com/WICG/webcomponents/issues/1069

Re: If not React, then what?

#130

Post by lowbloodsugar »

crvst wrote: post #73
QuiDortDine wrote: post #7

WOW this is a long article! Still waiting for the substance though... The only point I can agree with is that React is stupidly hard to learn. It feels like a tool made for aliens, though once you master it, it can be pretty efficient. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but the JS-free web isn't coming back. And if you're using modern JS, you might as well use React (or a similar tool). The user won't be able to tel…

Cannot agree more! Mastering React is ridiculously hard for what it is. There are so many “buts,” “it depends,” and subtle differences to navigate, like useEffect vs. useLayoutEffect. But don't forget useEffect is an evil in the first place and so on, and so on. It feels like a clever proof of concept with a leaky abstraction at its core, one that no amount of effort can truly fix, no matter how much they throw at it…

React is a guided missile foot gun. You can figure out how to have it hit something else, but even when you aren’t pointing it at your foot, it’s probably going to hit your foot. You can have that feeling of wonder as the rocket sails off into the distance, and then just as you get customers, it comes back over the horizon and hits your foot. Experienced physicists and rocket scientists can override the guidance mechanism and have a much better chance of not hitting a foot, but who has time for that. Most people just like that it has a big red button labeled “Shoot” that’s easy to press.
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