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The author discusses the sequential leaps towards functional programming: from mixins, to HOCs, to render props, and finally to hooks. I’m very comfortable with hooks, but I’m not much of a functional programmer beyond that. So my question is: what is the next step in this progression? What is after hooks?
The article even links to more material about FRP.
Sometimes I look at what's going on in React land and just want to ask these developers, do you really need all this to make a UI? Really? Are you sure? Are you making things better?
The author discusses the sequential leaps towards functional programming: from mixins, to HOCs, to render props, and finally to hooks. I’m very comfortable with hooks, but I’m not much of a functional programmer beyond that. So my question is: what is the next step in this progression? What is after hooks?
You can have a look at functional reactive programming for ideas. The article even links to more material about FRP.
Sometimes I look at what's going on in React land and just want to ask these developers, do you really need all this to make a UI? Really? Are you sure? Are you making things better?
Sometimes I look at what's going on in React land and just want to ask these developers, do you really need all this to make a UI? Really? Are you sure? Are you making things better?
It seemed to take a lot longer than normal to get comfortable with it as a framework. React still feels like a clever hack sometimes.
The author discusses the sequential leaps towards functional programming: from mixins, to HOCs, to render props, and finally to hooks. I’m very comfortable with hooks, but I’m not much of a functional programmer beyond that. So my question is: what is the next step in this progression? What is after hooks?
While each item in the series is "more functional" in some sense, the progression itself is not something reflective of some kind of standard progression of concepts or techniques within functional programming.
I'd say mixins have nothing to do with it; HOCs do in the sense that they're similar to higher-order functions (I suppose they literally are if the component is a function component); render props is pretty much purely a React concept to my knowledge, hooks I've heard described as "similar to" algebraic effects (this seems like an accessible article for more info: https://overreacted.io/algebraic-effects-for-the-rest-of-us/).
So I don't think there is any logical next step. To me it just feels like a series of individually thought out refactors, each leaving us with a system that's a bit more clean and compact than the last.
More broadly speaking though, I think any significant such changes will have the property of reducing impedance mismatch between React and some Platonic ideal of functional reactive programming (applied to html/css generation).
Sometimes I look at what's going on in React land and just want to ask these developers, do you really need all this to make a UI? Really? Are you sure? Are you making things better?
This only makes sense for a very narrow conception of the range of UI problems. If your UI is just a basic form or trivially reflecting database structure in a CRUD app, then you would have little to no need for React.
If you were to try building e.g. the full Gmail UI and make the attempt with e.g. document.querySelector (or jquery) and again with React you would have a painfully clear understand of the necessity. (And I've selected Gmail here not as an extreme example, but rather as typical of the kind of thing I've seen React getting used to build.)
As far as needing "all this," there seems to be a misconception: React is actually quite compact. If you take into account its entire history (as you might have to if maintaining a legacy codebase), you'd find some inelegant redundancy (mostly just supporting both class and function components)—but if you're just grabbing the latest version and using it for an appropriate problem, I think someone with a sense for good system design would have few complaints.
Sometimes I look at what's going on in React land and just want to ask these developers, do you really need all this to make a UI? Really? Are you sure? Are you making things better?
> do you really need all this to make a UI This only makes sense for a very narrow conception of the range of UI problems. If your UI is just a basic form or trivially reflecting database structure in a CRUD app, then you would have little to no need for React. If you were to try building e.g. the full Gmail UI and make the attempt with e.g. document.querySelector (or jquery) and again with React you would have a pai…
If you're using Python, write with Python concepts. In C#, write C#. In F#, write F#. Etc etc.
React has many many great ideas. But they are perpetually fighting the language. Here we have a great demonstration of stuff that is built in to any ml-legacy language being hacked into js in a way that the transformation happens in the user's browser in a scripting language at runtime! It's both genius and ridiculously inefficient and alien.
Don't fight the damn language.