Ask HN: ReactJS – Do you use it? Do you like it? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: ReactJS – Do you use it? Do you like it?

#21

Post by seivan » Sun, Jun 21, 2015, 2:08 AM UTC

andrewstuart wrote: post #18

It's great but it's a real pity that the most recent way of doing things with version 0.13 and ES2015 is quite different to the earlier ways of doing things. Don't get me wrong - the newest ways of working with 0.13 and ES6/ES2015 are superb. It's just that as a result of the changes much of the documentation, discussion, questions and answers and blog posts must first be examined to work out which version and way of…

This is precisely my issues, but with TypeScript instead of ES6 , types on this.props is worth switching to TypeScript from CoffeeScript or ES6.

Re: Ask HN: ReactJS – Do you use it? Do you like it?

#22

Post by notduncansmith » Sun, Jun 21, 2015, 2:13 AM UTC

I've used it for multiple apps at this point and it's been a huge win for me in terms of productivity (I'm also quite enjoying Reagent with ClojureScript so far, but I'll withhold judgement on that for now). Trying to apply simple FRP-style abstractions over state changes like Signals becomes infinitely more tractable in React, where components are just functions that return data (as opposed to most frameworks, like Angular, with their very effectful controllers and other code).

Also, having worked with both Angular and React alongside less experienced developers, I've noticed developers in general doing a lot less stupid shit with React (not to say none, just less). Angular doesn't have many strong philosophies about programming, so it's largely up to the programmer to make good decisions rather than have the framework make the right thing feel right - the latter, in my opinion, being what growing developers need.

My sample sizes have been limited though, so take this advice with a grain of salt. Also, I picked on Angular because that's the other framework I have a reasonable level of experience with, but you could substitute most frameworks in its place.

EDIT: One thing I'm still missing is Flux. I tend to use React alongside PouchDB, and thus haven't really encountered a need for Flux, but even then - I think I simply don't get it. I mean, it's just a convoluted event bus, right? What's the big deal? I don't mean to undermine the efforts of Facebook's engineering team(s), I rather feel like there must be something about the Flux architecture that I'm missing, that somehow makes it more valuable than a simple event bus.

Re: Ask HN: ReactJS – Do you use it? Do you like it?

#23

Post by notduncansmith » Sun, Jun 21, 2015, 2:17 AM UTC

simplify wrote: post #7

I tried it for a small project, but end up using Mithril.js for all my new projects instead. JSX, OOP, and Flux may be fine for some people, but I prefer to use plain, functional JavaScript.

I know that React likes to use the ES6 `class` syntax, and `React.createClass` otherwise, but the spirit of React seems very rooted in functional programming to me. Create pure functions that return data, no side-effects; use immutable data structures; minimize state where possible. I'm curious what about React gives off an OOP smell, besides the (admittedly curious) choice of syntax?

Re: Ask HN: ReactJS – Do you use it? Do you like it?

#24

Post by hliyan » Sun, Jun 21, 2015, 2:20 AM UTC

We recently developed a large application using Ember. It works very well, but I get the feeling it would have been a bit more maintainable had we done it with React using Flux architecture.

My only gripe: React doesn't play nice with things like Emblem.js (http://emblemjs.com/)

Re: Ask HN: ReactJS – Do you use it? Do you like it?

#25

Post by nearengine » Sun, Jun 21, 2015, 2:21 AM UTC

netik wrote: post #12

I migrated nearly all of troupeit.com over to ReactJS. I really love it, but my biggest complaint has to be the mixing of logic and views together, and the duplication of security checks. Although I'm not entirely sure I can blame react for that, I blame my moving from CGI to Ajax/RESTFul interfaces for most of that pain. We had about 90% of our codebase in RoR. In retrospect, I wish I had used Flux instead of React-…

Not all of your logic has to be in render() itself. You can define other methods on your component that will be bound to `this` in render(), so you can just call them like `this.renderFoo()`. Each one just has to return a single root node with optional children like the render() method does.

Re: Ask HN: ReactJS – Do you use it? Do you like it?

#26

Post by neovive » Sun, Jun 21, 2015, 2:24 AM UTC

I'm stuck in the middle right now with dependencies on jQuery for existing projects, while trying to learn both React and AngularJS. I've also been experimenting with Vue.js which seems like a nice middle ground between React and Angular. I am also wondering if it's just better to wait for Angular2 before fully-deciding either way. There is also a strong argument to be made for Polymer + Web Components as the better platform for future projects as the Web Components standard gains further vendor support. Any opinions?

Re: Ask HN: ReactJS – Do you use it? Do you like it?

#27

Post by alexmuro » Sun, Jun 21, 2015, 2:27 AM UTC

I use it, am very happy with it. Use npm for client and server. Modular design, and uni directional data flow makes project management better than ever.

#1 complaint is that watching with grunt react-browserfiy-ing the code buts a 3-15 second complile delay into my dev process.

Re: Ask HN: ReactJS – Do you use it? Do you like it?

#28

Post by seivan » Sun, Jun 21, 2015, 2:30 AM UTC

hliyan wrote: post #24

We recently developed a large application using Ember. It works very well, but I get the feeling it would have been a bit more maintainable had we done it with React using Flux architecture. My only gripe: React doesn't play nice with things like Emblem.js ( http://emblemjs.com/ )

You won't be needing Emblem if you use CoffeeScript and React.Dom instead of JSX.

Something like... import {Div, P} from React.Dom

render ->

  Div

   P {color :"blue}, "Hey"

Re: Ask HN: ReactJS – Do you use it? Do you like it?

#29

Post by grandalf » Sun, Jun 21, 2015, 2:32 AM UTC

I love it. The only things that could be improved are:

- some components in the ecosystem are more hobby projects and have trouble keeping up with React's API, even though it's small.

- Documentation for react-native could be a bit better (but react-native is amazing).

- I still haven't found a nontrivial and non-bloated example of react hot loader config, and getting it working on an existing project seems to be a bit of an art.

- Not all open source components are listed in NPM (but they should be).

- Still waiting for more info on Relay, which while cool, has created some uncertainty about best practices.

- Fluxxor is a great flux lib but isn't widely enough acclaimed as the clear winner, though it seems to be (though nothing wrong with competition).

Everyone I've introduced to React was a bit skeptical at first but now loves it and can't believe what life was life before.

Re: Ask HN: ReactJS – Do you use it? Do you like it?

#30

Post by ziahamza » Sun, Jun 21, 2015, 2:33 AM UTC

React is a pain to use with web components. The event handling in React blows up when it is rendered under shadow DOM, so building chrome extension through React can be a bit of pain.

They are aware of the issue, but too slow in responding to pull requests and mostly reject them for being 'not good enough'