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React and Redux are a joke right?

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Re: React and Redux are a joke right?

#51

Post by stickfigure »

bauerd wrote: post #15

>In the react world though you can’t mutate your data. Wrong, you're free to mutate your data. What's immutable is the virtual DOM fragment that a component maps the data onto. If you want to manipulate the DOM directly (and it can make sense), how about not choosing a virtual DOM/diffing library? >If you get 3 people react will end up re-rendering 3 times because of the code above. Yeah, because the code above is ob…

I'm about 6 months into a React project (coming from Angular1) and honestly I find the OP's rant pretty coherent. React requires a preposterous amount of code to maintain state, and Redux doubles down on boilerplate.

In Angular-land you can just mutate some JS objects and the UI magically updates. I really miss that.

I picked React over Angular2 because the setup was simpler and I wanted to try out this new thing that everyone has been raving about. I have a lot of misgivings about the choice. There are some things I like about React, but I probably will not choose it for my next SPA. There's just too much typing.

Re: React and Redux are a joke right?

#52

Post by mediumdeviation »

striking wrote: post #47
mediumdeviation wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

React feels like a library written for a language that's not JavaScript. JavaScript defaults to mutability by default - there are no immutable primitives that you can easily use, and even in ES6 just maintaining immutability without deep cloning everything takes a lot of effort. In that respect React is heavily opinionated.

"there are no immutable primitives" Many array prototype functions work in an immutable way like map and reduce

Updating an array element

  arr[3] = 'New content';
Updating an array element immutably

  arr = arr.map((element, index) => {
    if (index === 3) return 'New content';
    return element;
  });
It's possible, sure, but it feels terrible. JavaScript objects want to be mutated - it's the most idiomatic way of interacting with them. Whether functional programming paradigm is good (I certainly feel it is) is beside the point - JS wasn't designed for it.

When I think of immutable primitives, I think of Python's tuples, which will raise a big fat error when you try to mutate them, or even better, Swift's structs, which gives you a new copy with every mutation.

Re: React and Redux are a joke right?

#53

Post by overallduka »

Tade0 wrote: post #27

I think the author may like to consider Vue.js + Vuex. In Vuex in particular the first argument of each mutation is the store state, which you can mutate how you wish and the framework takes care of the rest.

Yeah. VueJS is powerful, easy, and made based on Javascript principles itself. I recommend for sure for who thinks React overcomplicates stuff, like me.

Re: React and Redux are a joke right?

#54

Post by gr__or »

stickfigure wrote: post #51
bauerd wrote: post #15

>In the react world though you can’t mutate your data. Wrong, you're free to mutate your data. What's immutable is the virtual DOM fragment that a component maps the data onto. If you want to manipulate the DOM directly (and it can make sense), how about not choosing a virtual DOM/diffing library? >If you get 3 people react will end up re-rendering 3 times because of the code above. Yeah, because the code above is ob…

I'm about 6 months into a React project (coming from Angular1) and honestly I find the OP's rant pretty coherent. React requires a preposterous amount of code to maintain state, and Redux doubles down on boilerplate. In Angular-land you can just mutate some JS objects and the UI magically updates. I really miss that. I picked React over Angular2 because the setup was simpler and I wanted to try out this new thing tha…

Redux is not intended to be THE state management lib for every possible use case. It sure can cover pretty much every case though as people tend to notice, that requires quite some boilerplate. For typical CRUD apps that stay in sync with the backend, I'd recommend going with MobX or GraphQL (Relay or Apollo on the client side). There you can directly mutate objects just like you're used to.

To reiterate what other people have said. This it not a problem of React, this is a problem of people blindly jumping on the Redux hype train, without doing the required reading into Redux and its use case.

Re: React and Redux are a joke right?

#55

Post by gr__or »

mediumdeviation wrote: post #52
striking wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"there are no immutable primitives" Many array prototype functions work in an immutable way like map and reduce

Updating an array element arr[3] = 'New content'; Updating an array element immutably arr = arr.map((element, index) => { if (index === 3) return 'New content'; return element; }); It's possible, sure, but it feels terrible. JavaScript objects want to be mutated - it's the most idiomatic way of interacting with them. Whether functional programming paradigm is good (I certainly feel it is) is beside the point - JS was…

if you use ES2015:

  arr = [
    ...arr.slice(0, 2),
    'New Content',
    ...arr.slice(3)
  ]

Re: React and Redux are a joke right?

#57

Post by captainmuon »

The article has a point. We tend to fix issues with state by avoiding mutability. That is like going to a doctor because it hurts when you laugh, and they just say "don't laugh". I wish there was a language that embraced mutability instead [1]. Mutability is how the computer works at the lowest levels, and how we tend to think about the world.

You would use plain old data objects to store everything. Then you would have first class observers, meaning you could have callbacks react to any changes to any object. But you wouldn't use that low-level functionality often. Instead you would e.g. create a listview, and just set it to observe the array. This is like "list adapters" that are in many frameworks, but built into the language.

One thing that I'd love to be able to do is to have the data as plain-old-objects, updated frequently from one thread, and the gui living on another thread that observes it occasionally in a read-only fashion (and occasionally sends mutating messages to the backend thread). You could implement that with read-write locks, but as far as I know no framework supports it directly.

Maybe this language would have a special block that takes imperative, mutating code, and lifts it to implement the command pattern [2]. You then could "undo" these blocks, coalesce them, and so on. (That doesn't work with arbitrary code, but with most code that operates on business data.)

(Here are some questions I asked on StackExchange, trying to find out if something like that already exists:)

[1]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/2298... [2]: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/3515...

Re: React and Redux are a joke right?

#58

Post by neya »

I'm one of the laggards - Over the years, based on staying around tech communities (esp. HN) I've learned not to invest time / effort into the hype that surrounds a newly launched tech. I did burn my finger a couple of times, especially with MongoDB back then, so these days I'm pretty cautious.

I'm one of the very few who didn't invest in React. I waited it out and invested into Vue.JS, instead. This is no framework war, purely based on opinions.

My opinion is pretty simple and resonates with a lot of people, apparently[1]:

    ~15 years trying to make everyone separate HTML, JS & CSS. And then suddenly everything went south and we’re writing code like this: [1]
This alone makes React a joke for me, let alone the author's post. If it resonates with you, then good for you. I may not be from Facebook or Google to have the authority, but I do know what's good in the long run and what isn't. I couldn't be happier with Vue.

[1] https://twitter.com/thomasfuchs/status/810885087214637057?la...

Re: React and Redux are a joke right?

#59

Post by BigJono »

mamp wrote: post #49
BigJono wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. I've been working with React for years now, over several large projects. I still feel like I'm not used to it, and I still hate it. That's not normal. We need to either figure out how to do this shit with mutable data structures, or we need a new language that's immutable by default. ImmutableJS blows chunks. Yeah it "saves" code until you start doing the data transformation dance trying to figure out when and w…

Why don't Flow or Typescript count? Our team uses TypeScript, mostly C# devs, it's been great. The main issue getting definitions for some less common libraries. We haven't been using immutability.js because of the back and forth overhead between regular JS and immutable objects. Instead we use mutation checking of the Redux store during development you can make sure nobody is stomping on it by accident.

> The main issue getting definitions for some less common libraries.

That's one problem. The other is discipline. It's just way too easy to opt out of the type system. It shouldn't be a problem, but in the world of deadlines where every single front-end dev is intimately familiar with writing plain old Javascript, it is. All it takes is one manager that's a bit pushy, or one urgent production bug, and your codebase is on it's way to turning into a pile of shit.

I do love type systems, but IMO they have to be part of the language, it just doesn't work as an optional addon.

Re: React and Redux are a joke right?

#60

Post by thenewvu »

React does its job fine. I think the good part of the post is pointing out the verbosity of Redux and you don't accept it. According to me, it totally depends on your implementation, Redux is just a concept of data flow, you made your choice when using react-redux. By time and eventually, you will figure out how to minimize the boilerplate, because you didn't accept it.
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