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First Impressions Using React Native

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Re: First Impressions Using React Native

#41

Post by jsprogrammer »

martco wrote: post #40
jsprogrammer wrote: post #34

The code style really reminds me of ExtJS circa 2.x (not sure what it's like now), which was pretty good at what it set out to do. However, React Native requires compiling down to various different platforms which means having to maintain multiple compatibility layers to continually shift to keep up with the native vendors. You're also pretty much stuck with proprietary distributors as well. Fun. Fun. This does look…

How is the real momentum going the other way (native -> Web)?

Those who have created the native environments (Google, MS, Apple) are also creating the browsers, with another big player thrown in (Mozilla). Facebook makes web applications, has no native environment, and is trying to swim the other way.

Re: First Impressions Using React Native

#42

Post by egillie »

martco wrote: post #40
jsprogrammer wrote: post #34

The code style really reminds me of ExtJS circa 2.x (not sure what it's like now), which was pretty good at what it set out to do. However, React Native requires compiling down to various different platforms which means having to maintain multiple compatibility layers to continually shift to keep up with the native vendors. You're also pretty much stuck with proprietary distributors as well. Fun. Fun. This does look…

How is the real momentum going the other way (native -> Web)?

Google Native Client is a big push for native -> web, though I haven't heard much about it lately...

Re: First Impressions Using React Native

#43

Post by adrusi »

danabramov wrote: post #18
Touche wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's too bad that you can't separate virtual dom, the innovative part of React, from the rest of React which has its warts. They should receive credit for coming up with the idea, but there are better, more reactive frameworks using virtual doms now. React shouldn't win simply because they were first and have a big company behind them.

Virtual DOM is an implementation detail of React for web. Its true innovation is its declarative component model. You are missing the point of React. https://medium.com/@dan_abramov/youre-missing-the-point-of-r...

The "declarative component model" is not an innovation, it's an obvious approach that has been used for ages when prototyping. You can achieve the same conceptual model of your interface by just generating the entire HTML of the page and rerendering it whenever something changes. This obviously doesn't perform and has some edge cases where it breaks things (textboxes, for example), but the idea is the same as react's components.

FRP is based around the idea of declarative components, but a lot of developers have an aversion to it because of the academic aura around it.

React's innovation is using virtual DOM to make declarative components usable without delving into FRP.

Re: First Impressions Using React Native

#44

Post by Justen »

rattray wrote: post #22
Touche wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's too bad that you can't separate virtual dom, the innovative part of React, from the rest of React which has its warts. They should receive credit for coming up with the idea, but there are better, more reactive frameworks using virtual doms now. React shouldn't win simply because they were first and have a big company behind them.

You can: https://www.npmjs.com/package/virtual-dom You should also check out Mithril: https://www.npmjs.com/package/mithril

Ractive also uses a virtual DOM. http://www.ractivejs.org/ I found the blog pretty useful for comparing to React: http://blog.ractivejs.org/posts/whats-the-difference-between...

Re: First Impressions Using React Native

#46

Post by peterhunt »

yuchi wrote: post #11

Seriously please stop making assumptions on Titanium without knowing a thing about it. > With the latter, you're also interfacing directly with native objects all the time, which is doomed to fail performance-wise. React Native actually performs the layout on a separate thread [...] Wrong. With Titanium you work with proxies. And JS is in a separate thread. The only actual difference between ReactNative and Titanium…

The issue with Titanium is the direct manipulation of view objects via the proxies.

Much of what makes React Native special is that everything -- from the original React API all the way to the latest and greatest bridge stuff -- has been designed with the assumption that the bridge (DOM) is the bottleneck so everything is batchable and async.

The API that Titanium gives you is much more traditional OOP which means that developers can easily create applications that chatter over the bridge.

Re: First Impressions Using React Native

#47

Post by Touche »

danabramov wrote: post #30
Touche wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is true of all virtual dom libraries. There is no point of two-way binding when you have a virtual dom, and I'm not sure it even makes sense since you have to rerender the tree anyways. So we agree, you're just separating the concept from the implementation and I'm talking about them as one.

There's a difference between “virtual DOM” and components. In React, components are not just functions that return their own virtual DOM. AFAIK for many vdom-based libraries this statement wouldn't be true. React components may have local state (as much as some people hate it, some find it useful), they have a lifecycle, can react to receiving new props with side effects, can implement diff bail-out hook. And you can…

The other libraries intentionally left out shouldComponentUpdate because they don't think it's something a developer should have to worry about. I don't know of any evidence to suggest that React is faster because of this feature.

And declarative nesting is a feature of all of the frameworks I've come across, I'm not sure why you think that's unique to React. The advantage feature I would credit React for is the size of its community and influential advocates like you.

Re: First Impressions Using React Native

#48

Post by LungButta »

Touche wrote: post #31
danabramov wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can use Om if you like, right? Or Omniscient. Or Morearty. Not everyone is ready to go into FP-land right now. React lets you take these decisions yourself. Whether local state is practical for your team or not. You must be living in a very different world than mine if you think that compared to its rivals (Angular, Ember, etc), React is somehow “encouraging” local state. Sure you could go more functional than th…

There are going to be lots of different types of frameworks that encourage different patterns all backed by this concept. I'm not saying React is the worst of the bunch but I also don't think it's clearly the best. All I'm saying is that when people praise React I wish they were really praising what you call "declarative component model". React is receiving 100% of the attention in this space when imo it should be re…

Yeah, I'm pretty sure it should at least be about 76%.

Re: First Impressions Using React Native

#49

Post by peterhunt »

zkhalique wrote: post #36

OK this DOM stuff is great but what about the other HTML5 interfaces, like sending requests to the server, localStorage, etc. ?

There is an API-compatible XMLHTTPRequest so all libs that have those deps (Backbone) work.

There is also localStorage (not in this release though), but it's not 100% compatible because it has an async API.

Re: First Impressions Using React Native

#50

Post by nwienert »

jsprogrammer wrote: post #34

The code style really reminds me of ExtJS circa 2.x (not sure what it's like now), which was pretty good at what it set out to do. However, React Native requires compiling down to various different platforms which means having to maintain multiple compatibility layers to continually shift to keep up with the native vendors. You're also pretty much stuck with proprietary distributors as well. Fun. Fun. This does look…

I agree with the "swimming the wrong way" sentiment, in my own very biased opinion. I'm working on reapp.io to solve just that. What's funny is react actually makes it possible to make hybrid a real option.
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