Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Yahoo Mail moving to React

slideshare.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 301 posts

Re: Yahoo Mail moving to React

#131

Post by dragonwriter »

general_failure wrote: post #126
loxs wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Writing something in PHP made sense in 2004. Although Erlang was around at the time, it wasn't at all well known. And no, you are not absolutely right, Facebook is not a PHP (only) shop. Their chat backend is in Erlang and that's a much bigger tell-tale than their legacy code. Also, a lot of us Erlangers speculate that Facebook bought WhatsApp (not only but also) because of their huge infrastructure know-how and (Erl…

Isn't that argument bad for erlang? That you need to pay an atrocious price for erlang know how.

> Isn't that argument bad for erlang? That you need to pay an atrocious price for erlang know how.

That erlang know-how commands a high price on the market is a good argument for developers to invest in developing that know how, and for organizations to work on fostering it in their staff.

Its only "bad for erlang" if you assume the only way to adopt erlang is for an organization to wake up out of the blue one day and decide "from this day forth, all our work will be in Erlang, and we're going to go out on the market today and hire up Erlang talent to enable that to occur."

Re: Yahoo Mail moving to React

#132

Post by al2o3cr »

cageface wrote: post #77

I've been a Javascript and Node skeptic for years now but I think the tide is finally turning. So much time and energy has been poured into making JS better that it's finally starting to pay off. Javascript with all the ES6 enhancements is really not a bad language. The runtime performance is already very good and continually getting better. Tools like Typescript and Flow make dealing with larger code bases much easi…

"Javascript with all the ES6 enhancements is really not a bad language."

File under "damning with faint praise", methinks. Not sure what it means if the "not all that bad" version is one that doesn't run natively anywhere yet...

Re: Yahoo Mail moving to React

#133

Post by oceanstone »

cageface wrote: post #77

I've been a Javascript and Node skeptic for years now but I think the tide is finally turning. So much time and energy has been poured into making JS better that it's finally starting to pay off. Javascript with all the ES6 enhancements is really not a bad language. The runtime performance is already very good and continually getting better. Tools like Typescript and Flow make dealing with larger code bases much easi…

> The runtime performance is already very good and continually getting better

Have you checked out the Computer Benchmarks Game? Here are some benchmarks they provide, comparing the JavaScript V8 to Python [1], Ruby [2], and PHP [3].

Looking at statistics such as these, I'm left thinking, "1. This is awesome! 2. Is there something about these other languages that prevents V8-like performance, or is this more a matter of browser performance being highly invested in by Google, Mozilla, etc.?"

[1] http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u64/benchmark.php?te...

[2] http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u64/benchmark.php?te...

[3] http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u64/benchmark.php?te...

Re: Yahoo Mail moving to React

#134

Post by marknutter »

mygreetings wrote: post #9

Little bit off topic but is there anyone like me in community having a problem with liking javascript? I have worked with javascript for years but it was always for DOM manipulation. When it comes to building an app with javascript, i feel like it is too fragile to depend on. Anyone can help me to get rid of this feeling?

Are you kidding? I can't remember the last time a node.js or javascript related article on the HN homepage didn't have a barrage of highly up-voted "javascript sucks" themed comments. I'm beginning to wonder the opposite - is there anyone like me in the community that doesn't have a problem liking javascript?

Re: Yahoo Mail moving to React

#135

Post by bad_user »

nwienert wrote: post #112
truncate wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never worked much with JS, but from my experience I find it hard to imagine writing such a big application in JS. It is so easy to do things wrong in JavaScript. Weak types, global namespace, ambiguous and unexpected behaviours.

I feel like people stick fingers in their ears and ignore the ecosystem whenever JS is mentioned. There's a wealth of transpilers and tools that fix all the problems mentioned here (if you even agree they are problems), and yet they are brought up every time. Weak types: Check out Facebook Flow or TypeScript. Global namespace: Not true with require/modules. Ambiguous/unexpected behavior... please explain? You could u…

Facebook Flow or TypeScript - still weak.

On require/modules, that's a freaking mess.

Ambiguous/unexpected behavior... nothing fixes it.

To make matters worse, there's always the promise of some magical library or tool that's going to fix your problems, until you discover that it sucks, or that it is unmaintained, or that it doesn't interoperate with another library and then you're back to search between thousands of pieces of crap that do the same thing.

I remember the days when people were having boners over CoffeeScript. Boy, that was a bad move.

Re: Yahoo Mail moving to React

#136

Post by ocfx »

nwienert wrote: post #112
truncate wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never worked much with JS, but from my experience I find it hard to imagine writing such a big application in JS. It is so easy to do things wrong in JavaScript. Weak types, global namespace, ambiguous and unexpected behaviours.

I feel like people stick fingers in their ears and ignore the ecosystem whenever JS is mentioned. There's a wealth of transpilers and tools that fix all the problems mentioned here (if you even agree they are problems), and yet they are brought up every time. Weak types: Check out Facebook Flow or TypeScript. Global namespace: Not true with require/modules. Ambiguous/unexpected behavior... please explain? You could u…

Flow is awesome

Re: Yahoo Mail moving to React

#137

Post by romaniv »

csallen wrote: post #127
romaniv wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're moving to an entirely different stack simply to make a web app searchable? After you chose to use an architecture (I mean SPA paradigm) that doesn't work with search engines very well? I just don't get it. No, really. I know that's what many people do, but I still don't get it. It is possible to build extremely dynamic websites that are not SPAs. It is possible to do it in a relatively straightforward fashion.…

Probably because he really wants to build an SPA and believes that it provides the best experience for his users. Which might be true.

The notion that SPA automatically gives you better user experience is a fallacy. Better UI design gives you better user experience, and good UI design is possible using the classic approach to web development. As an added bonus, you get searchability for free and you don't have to move away from your existing server-side stack.

Re: Yahoo Mail moving to React

#138

Post by [deleted] »

al2o3cr wrote: post #132
cageface wrote: post #77

I've been a Javascript and Node skeptic for years now but I think the tide is finally turning. So much time and energy has been poured into making JS better that it's finally starting to pay off. Javascript with all the ES6 enhancements is really not a bad language. The runtime performance is already very good and continually getting better. Tools like Typescript and Flow make dealing with larger code bases much easi…

"Javascript with all the ES6 enhancements is really not a bad language." File under "damning with faint praise", methinks. Not sure what it means if the "not all that bad" version is one that doesn't run natively anywhere yet...

[deleted]

Re: Yahoo Mail moving to React

#139

Post by bad_user »

oceanstone wrote: post #133
cageface wrote: post #77

I've been a Javascript and Node skeptic for years now but I think the tide is finally turning. So much time and energy has been poured into making JS better that it's finally starting to pay off. Javascript with all the ES6 enhancements is really not a bad language. The runtime performance is already very good and continually getting better. Tools like Typescript and Flow make dealing with larger code bases much easi…

> The runtime performance is already very good and continually getting better Have you checked out the Computer Benchmarks Game? Here are some benchmarks they provide, comparing the JavaScript V8 to Python [1], Ruby [2], and PHP [3]. Looking at statistics such as these, I'm left thinking, "1. This is awesome! 2. Is there something about these other languages that prevents V8-like performance, or is this more a matter…

That's not an objective comparison, since Javascript has been optimized to deal with arrays and numbers, as that's one main use-case that people have in the browser. Take a look at the source code and tell me if that's the kind of code that you write.

Re: Yahoo Mail moving to React

#140

Post by mncolinlee »

I see a ton of discussion about the NodeJS decision and almost nothing about the more interesting industry paradigm shift to reactive programming and using functional-style programming in an imperative language.

They're joining the likes of Facebook, Netflix, Square, Microsoft, Instagram, Khan Academy, SoundCloud, Trello, New York Times, and others in adopting reactive extensions.

Post reply on HN