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How I learned to stop worrying and love React

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Re: How I learned to stop worrying and love React

#11

Post by jawns »

fensipens wrote: post #9
jawns wrote: post #6

I recently worked on my first React project, after working with Angular code for a while. I'm willing to accept that as an app gets more complex, React/Flux really pays off. But there's something to be said for having a single template file for a single page in Angular, versus having JSX scattered among 20+ components for that same single page in React. When you want to get a 10,000-foot-view of how it all comes toge…

> But there's something to be said for having a single template file for a single page in Angular, versus having JSX scattered among 20+ components for that same single page in React. Good point; How does one view the resulting react-page anyway? CTRL+U shows no matter what state the SPA is in..

In Chrome, there's a cool React dev tools extension that shows you the React components.

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/react-developer-to...

Re: How I learned to stop worrying and love React

#12

Post by jkkramer »

fensipens wrote: post #9
jawns wrote: post #6

I recently worked on my first React project, after working with Angular code for a while. I'm willing to accept that as an app gets more complex, React/Flux really pays off. But there's something to be said for having a single template file for a single page in Angular, versus having JSX scattered among 20+ components for that same single page in React. When you want to get a 10,000-foot-view of how it all comes toge…

> But there's something to be said for having a single template file for a single page in Angular, versus having JSX scattered among 20+ components for that same single page in React. Good point; How does one view the resulting react-page anyway? CTRL+U shows no matter what state the SPA is in..

There's a React Dev Tools plugin for Chrome that will show a tree of components instead of the DOM.

Re: How I learned to stop worrying and love React

#13

Post by tobr »

ryannevius wrote: post #4

I went through something similar...and then I found Mithril ( http://lhorie.github.io/mithril/ ). I may be alone on this, but I've enjoyed working with Mithril much more than I ever did React. If you haven't given it a shot, I highly recommend you do.

What makes you like Mithril more? I've been looking at it for a while, and it seems very nice and lightweight.

All I really want is an easy way to get performant DOM manipulations. With React I have to build the whole view around the component system, which isn't so flexible. Am I right in thinking that Mithril allows you to put the view together any way you want, as long as the end result is an object it can diff into the DOM?

Re: How I learned to stop worrying and love React

#14

Post by rattray »

kozlovsky wrote: post #8

> However, all template languages are inherently crippled: they can never achieve the same expressiveness and power as code. Quite simply, {{# each}}, ng-repeat and databind="foreach" are all poor replacements for something that is native and trivial in JavaScript: a for loop. On the other hand, when using a template language I can put `foreach` loops and `if` conditions right into the template itself. And when using…

Have you tried using react without JSX? I find it much nicer. Putting

    var R = React.createElement
at the top of each file will make it more ergonomic.

Re: How I learned to stop worrying and love React

#15

Post by nathanaldensr »

diminish wrote: post #5

Question for experts: why Browsers do not get the idea of updating changes the way react does automatically possibly with a start, stop transaction or better without.

It would be wonderful if browsers acted more like game engines. Collect user input and at the beginning of every rendering "frame", allow JavaScript to process the input and modify a virtual DOM. Then, render the virtual DOM. It would be so much easier to reason about web applications this way.

Re: How I learned to stop worrying and love React

#16

Post by nodiscpls »

ryannevius wrote: post #4

I went through something similar...and then I found Mithril ( http://lhorie.github.io/mithril/ ). I may be alone on this, but I've enjoyed working with Mithril much more than I ever did React. If you haven't given it a shot, I highly recommend you do.

Next up - how I stopped learning how to be a real developer and accepted what framework farcebook ejected today. Tomorrow - abdicating database decisions in favour of whatever I read about on HN today.

Re: How I learned to stop worrying and love React

#17

Post by antris »

jawns wrote: post #6

I recently worked on my first React project, after working with Angular code for a while. I'm willing to accept that as an app gets more complex, React/Flux really pays off. But there's something to be said for having a single template file for a single page in Angular, versus having JSX scattered among 20+ components for that same single page in React. When you want to get a 10,000-foot-view of how it all comes toge…

> But there's something to be said for having a single template file for a single page in Angular, versus having JSX scattered among 20+ components for that same single page in React

I'm not sure what you mean. There's nothing in React that would prevent you from making your pages just one huge component. You can split the code any way you like.

Re: How I learned to stop worrying and love React

#18

Post by ble »

fensipens wrote: post #9
jawns wrote: post #6

I recently worked on my first React project, after working with Angular code for a while. I'm willing to accept that as an app gets more complex, React/Flux really pays off. But there's something to be said for having a single template file for a single page in Angular, versus having JSX scattered among 20+ components for that same single page in React. When you want to get a 10,000-foot-view of how it all comes toge…

> But there's something to be said for having a single template file for a single page in Angular, versus having JSX scattered among 20+ components for that same single page in React. Good point; How does one view the resulting react-page anyway? CTRL+U shows no matter what state the SPA is in..

You want to look at the DOM structure of the page as it exists in the loaded page and have I got a treat for you! Figure out how to open the web inspector for your browser; the keyboard shortcuts are ctrl-shift-I or cmd-shift-I or cmd-opt-I on a few (platform, browser) pairs.

(This will show you the actual DOM, not the React components... but since you were talking about 'view-source', this might help you too.)

Re: How I learned to stop worrying and love React

#19

Post by antris »

gadr90 wrote: post #2

Wow, author here. Woke up to a lot of unexpected traffic on the blog. I hope you like this article. I took a long time to understand React and, now I do, I hope other people don't take as long as I did!

It's a really neat article. Thanks for explaining this stuff. I have no patience for it :)

Re: How I learned to stop worrying and love React

#20

Post by fensipens »

ble wrote: post #18
fensipens wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But there's something to be said for having a single template file for a single page in Angular, versus having JSX scattered among 20+ components for that same single page in React. Good point; How does one view the resulting react-page anyway? CTRL+U shows no matter what state the SPA is in..

You want to look at the DOM structure of the page as it exists in the loaded page and have I got a treat for you! Figure out how to open the web inspector for your browser; the keyboard shortcuts are ctrl-shift-I or cmd-shift-I or cmd-opt-I on a few (platform, browser) pairs. (This will show you the actual DOM, not the React components... but since you were talking about 'view-source', this might help you too.)

Thanks, that's what I've been looking for!
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