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Does anybody like React?

jsx.lol

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Re: Does anybody like React?

#151
One of the talks I really enjoyed is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9SDuTSy7ps. In my experience, React's architecture is really good and lends itself quite well to making large applications.

Unfortunately, React's biggest problem is that it forces you into the JS/TS ecosystem, which is, without a doubt in my mind, a compilation target rather than a system I wish to interact with natively.

I'm happy with Elm -- the community is really small, and sometimes you have to roll your own libraries. TEA is sometimes... unnatural (coming from React), but the fact that you do not have to worry about implicit and unexpected state (see useEffect), I always get excited to work with Elm.

Additionally, Claude seems to manage itself better in Elm than in React, at least within large, scary codebases.

Re: Does anybody like React?

#152

Yes! It is hands-down, the most intuitive interface, that has successfully married declarative and imperative styles together. IMO, nothing comes close to JSX across the length and breadth of UI frameworks across all languages.

Flutter, SwiftUI, Jetpack Compose: a whole lot of other platforms have been implementing React as their UI framework

I wouldn't say Compose UI/Flutter/SwiftUI are "implementing React", but if your point is that other platforms have better solutions than JSX (plus all the bloat React adds to applications), I absolutely agree.

Re: Does anybody like React?

#153
I think mostly people like to have logical component with all the code in one place and not have to think about structuring css/html/js separately. Many people like react for jsx (surprisingly, because initially there was a lot of push back even in early react adoption).

Then they took it to the next level with things like styled-component. Virtual DOM is just an implementation detail and overrated to the success of React.

Any future web framework that solves that component thing and allow people to just write code instead of "web code", they'll win.

(I am aware that the web veterans don't like that view)

Re: Does anybody like React?

#154

I loved react in 2013 when it had the life cycle methods. Everything was deterministic, I knew what caused what where and when. Now every framework is a mess and I'm glad I won't have to learn anyone's crap anymore thanks to random code generators.

I lived there idea of hooks when they were introduced.

But they’ve honestly not worked out.

React works have been a lot better if the React team has figured out what useEffect was supposed to be right at the beginning, or at least when they changed what it was supposed to be used for they documented that clearly instead of gaslighting devs into believing nothing has changed.

Also, hooks aren’t a thing. Each hook is its own API and concept. Grouping them under the umbrella term “hooks” gave the wrong impression that it was a single concept, but there’s No conceptual similarity between ushered, useState or useEffect. The only similarity are the restrictions on their use and nomenclature.

Re: Does anybody like React?

#155
post #123

As someone who lived through all major waves of JS for the last ~16 years, I do love react, in a sense: React is the worst JS framework except for all the others we've tried. I'd take React over the Angular 1 days any time. I'd take Angular 1's full-bodied MVC over the "build it yourself from scratch every time" approach of Backbone. I'd take Backbone's minimal MVC structure over the classic JQuery Soup architecture.…

React was a major improvement over Backbone + Marionette. Pre-jQuery was a shit-show as they hadn't even standardised the DOM. Before that was XMLHttpRequest (particularly during my .Net WebForm days) and even had to use the ActiveXObject in IE that predated JSON.

Give me Backbone + anything over React. Backbone was the last time I really felt close to the web page I was creating.

Re: Does anybody like React?

#156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 100% pure JavaScript directly How did the React community convince so many people of this falsehood? Do that many people just not know what javascript is? It baffles me that one could look at JSX and be like, “that right there is vanilla javascript”.

What people mean is obviously that you use JS primitives for looping, branching, conditionals, etc. over some DSL. Everybody knows that the tags are added syntax, there is no conspiracy here.

"These burgers are pure beef! Obviously what people mean is that beef is one of the ingredients. Everyone knows that the plastic is added in, there's no conspiracy here"

Re: Does anybody like React?

#157
post #37

As someone who lived through all major waves of JS for the last ~16 years, I do love react, in a sense: React is the worst JS framework except for all the others we've tried. I'd take React over the Angular 1 days any time. I'd take Angular 1's full-bodied MVC over the "build it yourself from scratch every time" approach of Backbone. I'd take Backbone's minimal MVC structure over the classic JQuery Soup architecture.…

What about Angular 2+?

I tried Angular 2+ back in the day. I found it frustrating to learn as the API had changed between versions, and when searching for help you would come across a blog post/stackoverflow answer, start implementing it and realise it didn't work in the version of Angular your project was in. Frustrating.

Tried React afterwards, this frustration didn't really exist and it was much easier to pick up.

Re: Does anybody like React?

#158
I think so, because it's created in Meta, thus having a huge developer base already and spread its way out of there. If you earn your life writing it, because your employer forces you to do so and you never try other stuff that long, you end up liking it.

I have never found the idea of having a Virtual DOM and diffing in runtime a good solution to the problem, maybe that's why I never liked React. I mean if you are writing a lot of code, have an enormous build step already and use a bloated library, why not have it compiled too anyway. That's why I like the thinking behind Svelte.

Re: Does anybody like React?

#159
post #130

> Critical Security Vulnerability in React Server Components RSC isn’t React. > Next.js 15.1+ is unusable outside of Vercel Next.js isn’t React. By contrast to nextjs, React + Vite is quite a nice combo. Maybe Bun or Deno are also good? But nextjs and RSC should be kept separate from the discussion. With React I find there is usually a clear and simple way to achieve what you want, and while it doesn’t perform super…

why is RSC not considered react? it is designed by core React team, and heavily recommended by core React team. and needs deep support from react.

Subjective depending on who you ask, but for me RSC is not really representative of React usage. (I believe) the vast majority of React apps (and the vast majority of dev experience in React) are front end only. I have been writing React in some form for 8+ years, but never touched RSC.

Re: Does anybody like React?

#160

> Critical Security Vulnerability in React Server Components RSC isn’t React. > Next.js 15.1+ is unusable outside of Vercel Next.js isn’t React. By contrast to nextjs, React + Vite is quite a nice combo. Maybe Bun or Deno are also good? But nextjs and RSC should be kept separate from the discussion. With React I find there is usually a clear and simple way to achieve what you want, and while it doesn’t perform super…

> Next.js isn’t React.

But it seems becoming. Many React maintainers are on Vercel's payroll and Next.js is also defining where React is going.

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