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Relay Modern: Simpler, faster, more extensible

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Re: Relay Modern: Simpler, faster, more extensible

#91

Post by [deleted] »

_pmf_ wrote: post #82
Meai wrote: post #80

Seriously, your own homegrown garbage collection inside the js runtime? I looked at React the first time it came out and aside from the insanity of using xml mixed with javascript or some kind of pseudo js, it was waaaay too complex. I dont know but it seems crazy to me to write applications like that, it makes xaml look decently simple.

FB employs one of the world's best C++ developers (Andrei Alexandrescu) to write custom string implementations and maintain/extend their homegrown PHP VM. Their development practices would be completely unsustainable for any company that has anything resembling economic accountability.

[deleted]

Re: Relay Modern: Simpler, faster, more extensible

#92

Post by steveklabnik »

_pmf_ wrote: post #82
Meai wrote: post #80

Seriously, your own homegrown garbage collection inside the js runtime? I looked at React the first time it came out and aside from the insanity of using xml mixed with javascript or some kind of pseudo js, it was waaaay too complex. I dont know but it seems crazy to me to write applications like that, it makes xaml look decently simple.

FB employs one of the world's best C++ developers (Andrei Alexandrescu) to write custom string implementations and maintain/extend their homegrown PHP VM. Their development practices would be completely unsustainable for any company that has anything resembling economic accountability.

Andrei left Facebook almost two years ago https://forum.dlang.org/post/xsqrdgwnzehdmfmvcznn@forum.dlan...

Re: Relay Modern: Simpler, faster, more extensible

#94

Post by ivan7237d »

twoquestions wrote: post #88
staticassertion wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last time I looked at reason it was totally new and there was no tooling etc. I got little support from the gitter or whatever it was. Have things changed? It really interested me at the time.

It was a bit tough to get tooling set up and it doesn't work on Windows, but on Mac (and Linux I assume) it's amazing. Better Intellisense support in VSCode than Typescript! It is very new though, and I haven't got a complete grip of JS FFI with Reason.

Hey a quick question — which Flow extension are you using? There's the official one called "Flow Language Support" and another one called vscode-flow-ide.

UPD: sorry, I just realized you were talking about Reason, never mind.

Re: Relay Modern: Simpler, faster, more extensible

#95

Post by toddmorey »

theprotocol wrote: post #81
Meai wrote: post #80

Seriously, your own homegrown garbage collection inside the js runtime? I looked at React the first time it came out and aside from the insanity of using xml mixed with javascript or some kind of pseudo js, it was waaaay too complex. I dont know but it seems crazy to me to write applications like that, it makes xaml look decently simple.

I still firmly believe riot.js ( http://riotjs.com/ ) is the best "react-like" tool even though it's almost entirely unknown (sadly) and its website/PR/general presentation is a bit janky. It's essentially a very very tiny, minimally opinionated structural layer that lets you build html components (called "tags") using almost entirely vanilla JS. It inverts the JSX paradigm: where JSX is "html in the middle of your c…

I found and loved Riot, too. Even used it to build a medium-sized application. At a time when React was in flux (pun intended, I guess) it was the first implementation of the custom component model that made me go "ah ha!" Mostly because how fast I could be useful with it.

The challenge I think for Riot is just that the community never really developed around it. As my friend always says, when you pick a technology, you are picking a community, and the latter may matter more in the end.

I find Vue to to be the best blend of the two. Great docs, great community, and as powerful as react. (Don't let the declarative templates fool you, everything compiles down to render functions and you can even write JSX or even hyperscript if you want to.)

Vue doesn't quite have the React ecosystem but in some situations fewer choices may be better, as examples, boilerplates, etc, seem to have more in common rather than less.

Re: Relay Modern: Simpler, faster, more extensible

#96

Post by gavinpc »

theprotocol wrote: post #81
Meai wrote: post #80

Seriously, your own homegrown garbage collection inside the js runtime? I looked at React the first time it came out and aside from the insanity of using xml mixed with javascript or some kind of pseudo js, it was waaaay too complex. I dont know but it seems crazy to me to write applications like that, it makes xaml look decently simple.

I still firmly believe riot.js ( http://riotjs.com/ ) is the best "react-like" tool even though it's almost entirely unknown (sadly) and its website/PR/general presentation is a bit janky. It's essentially a very very tiny, minimally opinionated structural layer that lets you build html components (called "tags") using almost entirely vanilla JS. It inverts the JSX paradigm: where JSX is "html in the middle of your c…

Several points of agreement here, and now I'll have to check out Riot (which I remember seeing around here a while ago).

But I think that

> html in the middle of your code

is selling JSX a bit short. Tooling and coupling aside (and I agree those are strikes against it), JSX creates a pair of mutually-recursive, formally-defined languages, which you can switch between freely and frictionlessly. I've never seen this before, not even in lisp, where quoting/unquoting is bad enough at a single level.

This—the ability to compose languages—is extremely powerful in general. Even if you don't like JSX per se, I'd bet there is some set of languages that you'd like to be able to use this way. I'd look at the "controversy" around JSX (and Babel and the React dependency) in this light, as a learning experience.

For example, JSX is really just a variation on EX4, which has been around for much longer. A number of "external" factors have put JSX over the edge (of mass adoption), and these mostly have to do with React's popularity. By the time I capitulated and decided to try React, I found that I already had tooling support for JSX, even though I was pegged to Babel 5.8 for reasons.

I think this is the principle behind OMeta: we should be able to iterate on language features as freely as we do on application features. We ship applications, why shouldn't we ship the languages, too? (Of course OMeta came out of VPRI, and Alan Kay's view is that we could just ship the whole dang system!) Anyway, from that perspective, JSX is no more "insanity" than some of the things we do to work around the rigidity of languages-as-silos.

Re: Relay Modern: Simpler, faster, more extensible

#97

Post by acjohnson55 »

andrewingram wrote: post #83
Meai wrote: post #80

Seriously, your own homegrown garbage collection inside the js runtime? I looked at React the first time it came out and aside from the insanity of using xml mixed with javascript or some kind of pseudo js, it was waaaay too complex. I dont know but it seems crazy to me to write applications like that, it makes xaml look decently simple.

I feel you're being disingenuous here. They're just talking about automatic cache eviction, which wasn't possible/trivial with the previous version of Relay.

I agree with you. But given the announcements own terminology, I think the misunderstanding is understandable.

Re: Relay Modern: Simpler, faster, more extensible

#98

Post by rojobuffalo »

StreamBright wrote: post #6

Is there any great libraries to implement the backend for GraphQL? I think the benefits of using GraphQL on the frontend are pretty obvious, however last time I checked I had trouble of finding good documentation or implementation on how to serve GraphQL requests from the backend point of view.

If you're willing to commit to Postgres, this package makes turning on a GraphQL API as simple as writing a couple lines of middleware: https://github.com/postgraphql/postgraphql

Re: Relay Modern: Simpler, faster, more extensible

#99

Post by yourad_io »

Meai wrote: post #80

Seriously, your own homegrown garbage collection inside the js runtime? I looked at React the first time it came out and aside from the insanity of using xml mixed with javascript or some kind of pseudo js, it was waaaay too complex. I dont know but it seems crazy to me to write applications like that, it makes xaml look decently simple.

> homegrown garbage collection

You could say the same about shadow dom rendering: "Your own homegrown DOM renderer?". But in practice, it has a good reason to exist (performance vs. real DOM) and nearly zero usability issues (it is completely invisible to the developer, "it just works").

If they hadn't considered "garbage collection" (cache eviction, really) then it would have been seriously difficult to manage from outside Relay (and would partly defeat the point of using it).

Re: Relay Modern: Simpler, faster, more extensible

#100

Post by Thorncorona »

gavinpc wrote: post #96
theprotocol wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still firmly believe riot.js ( http://riotjs.com/ ) is the best "react-like" tool even though it's almost entirely unknown (sadly) and its website/PR/general presentation is a bit janky. It's essentially a very very tiny, minimally opinionated structural layer that lets you build html components (called "tags") using almost entirely vanilla JS. It inverts the JSX paradigm: where JSX is "html in the middle of your c…

Several points of agreement here, and now I'll have to check out Riot (which I remember seeing around here a while ago). But I think that > html in the middle of your code is selling JSX a bit short. Tooling and coupling aside (and I agree those are strikes against it), JSX creates a pair of mutually-recursive , formally-defined languages, which you can switch between freely and frictionlessly. I've never seen this b…

>we should be able to iterate on language features as freely as we do on application features. We ship applications, why shouldn't we ship the languages, too?

Time needed to learn and refactor :/

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