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Get in zoomer, we're saving React

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Re: Get in zoomer, we're saving React

#41

Post by _0w8t »

asddubs wrote: post #26
AaronFriel wrote: post #21

I thought this was the most insightful part, though it would be the second most if the author did more than allude to conflict-free replicated data types. Whenever you build a tiny language for the purpose of templating, it's worth asking yourself if it's really worth it to have to reinvent variables, loops, branches, scoping, expressions, and functions... Poorly. > Many competing frameworks acted like this wasn't so…

I always thought the point of the template language was more to enforce the boundary of presentation and code. and thus any template language that grows too powerful is a bad template language, because it's no longer doing the one job it has. So I think a template language should have loops, (non mutable) variables and basic conditions, that's it. So if there's something you can't do in your template that you want to…

If a template needs loops or even conditionals, it is already too complex for my taste as it leads to wrong design patterns blurring presentation/code boundary. Something that just allows to access variables and call functions will keep the boundary while allowing a non-programmer or even the end-user to edit it.

Re: Get in zoomer, we're saving React

#42

Post by Existenceblinks »

jeswin wrote: post #38
Existenceblinks wrote: post #13

> Crucially, none of the React alternatives solve this FFS. The context is the web, nobody solves graphic problem like gaming for you, or need to. At this point it doesn't matter because HTML/DOM stuff is not going to suffice what you are talking about either. I honestly think after reading 50% of the article is all about bragging knowing history. I'm not old but I was there too. WIN32, MFC, QT, 8086 assembly whateve…

> I honestly think after reading 50% of the article is all about bragging knowing history. This is why I can't read most tech articles these days. Won't get to the point without a long detour into the background of the problem; as someone in my forties, it's hard to justify the expense.

I kinda get him having to drag these historical UI to draw some points but ended up having no critical points for current context and title. I guess it's info for "Get in Zoomer" part but failed to demonstrate "We're Saving React". If a zoomer read that, what should they do, what's the point to get start here, and should they save React or start something new?

Re: Get in zoomer, we're saving React

#43

Post by cowtools »

chris_armstrong wrote: post #39

This article is weird linking together many unrelated strands of thought. Like linking reactive programming to “reactive” UIs, when really they mean UIs that are forgiving to their users instead of breaking down. Or how by coding on the web we’ve lost the immediacy of a UI that runs on our desktop, and the primitives (like undo/redo stacks) that make desktop user interfaces friendlier, at least without having to buil…

As someone who has admittedly worked on approximately 0 user-facing programs, it seems like there are not many revolutionary ideas when it comes UI.

I have some dream of a sort of user-interface system that exposes controls and data more directly to the user, independent of the author's stylistic choices. Sort of like semantic HTML with style-sheets that are configured on a per-user basis. It would be analogous to the unix shell in the sense that it would allow small programs to easily inter-operate, like plan9's pumbing or something. Instead of having a big monolithic program like kdenlive or blender, you would have a number of modifiable general-use programs that can be re-arranged to fit many use-cases in an extensible way.

But instead of that it just seems like every toolkit or library wants to be highly specialized and complex, and provide for a very specific use-case rather than making the most general-possible user interface that is universal. Programmers should not be concerned with the appearance of their UIs like window decorations or the layout of buttons or text fields, for the same reason they should not be concerned with the minutia of optimizing assembly-code. It leads to a non-portable design. That should be left up to the system.

Re: Get in zoomer, we're saving React

#44

Post by mwcampbell »

> What's really frustrating about all this is how passive and helpless the current generation of web developers seem to be in all this. It's as if they've all been lulled into complacency by convenience. They seem afraid to carve out their own ambitious paths, and lack serious gusto for engineering. If there isn't a "friendly" bot spewing encouraging messages with plenty of emoji at every turn, they won't engage.

> As someone who took a classical engineering education, which included not just a broad scientific and mathematical basis, but crucially also the necessary engineering ethos, this is just alien to me. Call me cynical all you want, but it matches my experience. Coming after the generation that birthed Git and BitTorrent, and which killed IE with Firefox and Konqueror/WebKit, it just seems ridiculous.

> Fuck, most zoomers don't even know how to dance. I don't mean that they are bad at dancing, I mean they literally won't try, and just stand around awkwardly.

> Just know: nobody else is going to do it for you. So what are you waiting for?

It seems like ranting about how the older generations were better, and conversely the younger generation is decadent, is as old as history itself. Anybody know why this is the case? Is it that our overall character has really been heading downhill for all of history? Or is it something else, like how we generally remember the best of the past but mostly notice the worst or merely average in the present?

Re: Get in zoomer, we're saving React

#45

Post by Existenceblinks »

inductive_magic wrote: post #32
Existenceblinks wrote: post #13

> Crucially, none of the React alternatives solve this FFS. The context is the web, nobody solves graphic problem like gaming for you, or need to. At this point it doesn't matter because HTML/DOM stuff is not going to suffice what you are talking about either. I honestly think after reading 50% of the article is all about bragging knowing history. I'm not old but I was there too. WIN32, MFC, QT, 8086 assembly whateve…

>I'm not sure what's the point of React here nor "Saving React". Why it needs to be saved in which sense. I read it as “svelte et al gain traction due to inferior younglings, therefore react is a sinking ship, let’s not let it sink because the tooling I use is the adequate choice (despite having to be saved)”

Yeah. The first paragraph is that point, but the follow up paragraphs are more of general sense of building UI.

The other frameworks or libs lately move towards non virtual dom and reactivity. Solid, Preact, Svelte, Vue, Lit are superior engineering wise. But React is about the whole economy (unbelievable VCs put 100+ millions on that), so more libs more stuff created, rich ecosystem, poor engineering.

Re: Get in zoomer, we're saving React

#46

Post by stasm »

> When you rename or move a file that you're editing, its window instantly reflects the new name and location.

How does macOS achieve its reactivity? Is it two-way bindings? Events/messages? Immediate mode re-renders?

Re: Get in zoomer, we're saving React

#47

Post by digianarchist »

faraaz98 wrote: post #10
crooked-v wrote: post #7

This post ultimately seems to spend a long time complaining about other people not putting in the effort to fix the problems of React... while the author doesn't offer any solutions or even ideas for solutions. Also, the author makes repeated digs at React 18's concurrent mode work while at the same time complaining about the kind of stuff concurrent mode is supposed to fix (for example, React updates not happening f…

As soon as I saw, "you should listen to your elders" being used as a reason to read this article, i knew it wouldn't be high quality

Aren't the majority of the core team in their 20s? Doesn't seem like age has much to do about anything here.

Re: Get in zoomer, we're saving React

#48

Post by skohan »

cowtools wrote: post #43
chris_armstrong wrote: post #39

This article is weird linking together many unrelated strands of thought. Like linking reactive programming to “reactive” UIs, when really they mean UIs that are forgiving to their users instead of breaking down. Or how by coding on the web we’ve lost the immediacy of a UI that runs on our desktop, and the primitives (like undo/redo stacks) that make desktop user interfaces friendlier, at least without having to buil…

As someone who has admittedly worked on approximately 0 user-facing programs, it seems like there are not many revolutionary ideas when it comes UI. I have some dream of a sort of user-interface system that exposes controls and data more directly to the user, independent of the author's stylistic choices. Sort of like semantic HTML with style-sheets that are configured on a per-user basis. It would be analogous to th…

It's a nice idea, but if it were easy it would have been done by now. I think a lot of the problem is that UI tends to be very specific, and often giving one component what it needs to work well imposes requirements on other components.

In order for a UI to work well and be comprehensible, there has to be a sensible hierarchy over the entire layout. If you don't achieve that, the whole might be less than the sum of its parts.

But I think React is actually probably the closest thing to what you are describing. It does a pretty good job of encapsulating UI components into fairly small chunks which can be styled externally to fit into a larger layout.

I also agree it would make sense to break things like Blender into smaller applications. But actually I think that would have more to do with having a standardized interoperable model layer, with a clear interface, so different applications could modify the same data with a different UI layer.

Re: Get in zoomer, we're saving React

#49

Post by Barrin92 »

mwcampbell wrote: post #44

> What's really frustrating about all this is how passive and helpless the current generation of web developers seem to be in all this. It's as if they've all been lulled into complacency by convenience. They seem afraid to carve out their own ambitious paths, and lack serious gusto for engineering. If there isn't a "friendly" bot spewing encouraging messages with plenty of emoji at every turn, they won't engage. > A…

> Anybody know why this is the case?

Because it's often true, although it's more cyclical than downhill. You have an open emerging technology and people start out self-reliant and have to learn from the ground up out of necessity, and over time things become so tower of babel like that new people can't or don't need to understand it anymore. Then it gets so bad that someone tears it down and you're back to the starting point

Re: Get in zoomer, we're saving React

#50

Post by skohan »

stasm wrote: post #46

> When you rename or move a file that you're editing, its window instantly reflects the new name and location. How does macOS achieve its reactivity? Is it two-way bindings? Events/messages? Immediate mode re-renders?

If I had to venture to guess based on how their APIs work, it's probably events. There's a system called "NotificationCenter" which can be observed to receive system events within Apple API's which is quite old.
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