Why so many front end developers obsessed with React/Angluar?

#1

Post by nogenhat » Fri, Mar 25, 2016, 6:08 PM UTC

I really care about a simple question, why most of frontend developers, which one i know, obsessed with new frameworks. In fact React / Angular / Backbone / Knockout are born and die again in a couple of years. Everyone can see some interesting things (virtual dom (simply wonderful!)), and begin to write / rewrite their applications using the new framework.

At the same time, most of the projects, which you can see would be just fine by simply using server-side rendering and for example PostCSS.

The development would be simpler, code usually much simple and without MBs of JS libraries.

And, important for business, time to market, hiring of developers i suppose would move faster.

I understand that this is all very interesting things, good to be in trend and understand whats going on, but to be aware of technology and immediately implement it in production system...hm, not so sure about this.

Now I look at ClojureScript as an acceptable replacement for JS development, because after release of ES6, and reading ES7 specs, there is a feeling that the direction in which the ecosystem moving is wrong one.

So, the frontend world is changing a lot quickly and in different directions, but which one is right one, i have a serious doubts.

Re: Why so many front end developers obsessed with React/Angluar?

#2

Post by sedeki » Fri, Mar 25, 2016, 6:16 PM UTC

Angular is over-engineered and I doubt what they are doing is the right way to go. React, on the other hand, simplifies the stack a lot actually.

I don't think we will seriously find a consensus until we get WebAssembly.

Re: Why so many front end developers obsessed with React/Angluar?

#3

Post by mc_hammer » Fri, Mar 25, 2016, 6:26 PM UTC

somebody finally handled state right for a framework ;p

also components, and generating repeating elements with js builtins: `{ items.map(item=>{item.text} }` is cool.

Re: Why so many front end developers obsessed with React/Angluar?

#4

Post by CuriouslyC » Fri, Mar 25, 2016, 7:56 PM UTC

Angular was nice because two way data binding greatly simplified a lot of user-interface management code, and dependency injection made it easier to cleanly factor your code. Unfortunately, the boilerplate involved in creating directives tends to result in monolithic html templates that do way too much (and are hard to maintain), and the digest cycle/dirty checking ends up causing a lot of issues when things get complicated.

React makes it easy to create small components, encouraging maintainable, reusable software. On the flip side, passing data around in your application is a lot of work, and even the best current solution (unidirectional data flow with something like Redux) is very oblique and involves significant boilerplate.

In my opinion the React/Redux model is pretty good, and the libraries are well designed, there is just a need for a good framework to deal with the indirection involved in unidirectional state flow. I'm currently working on something in this space, it just needs some additional battle-testing so I can settle on the interface and work out all the kinks.

Re: Why so many front end developers obsessed with React/Angluar?

#5

Post by AznHisoka » Fri, Mar 25, 2016, 8:45 PM UTC

I totally agree with you. I'd love to see more technical expertise/resources into improving backend technologies like ElasticSearch/Lucene, Redis, etc.

There's only so many incremental improvements to front-end development left.

Re: Why so many front end developers obsessed with React/Angluar?

#6

Post by speg » Fri, Mar 25, 2016, 8:59 PM UTC

sedeki wrote: post #2

Angular is over-engineered and I doubt what they are doing is the right way to go. React, on the other hand, simplifies the stack a lot actually. I don't think we will seriously find a consensus until we get WebAssembly.

Is WebAssembly going to solve anything though? Most of what I've read about it is that it will be an accessory to JavaScript. Things like databases, video encoding, 3D rendering, etc.. Will we really be interfacing with the DOM APIs in C?

Even if that is how it plays out, we'll still have a dozen frameworks to decided between, at least one for every language that targets WebAssembly.

Re: Why so many front end developers obsessed with React/Angluar?

#7

Post by jonesb6 » Fri, Mar 25, 2016, 9:16 PM UTC

Is code valuable because of conciseness, clarity, and speed, or because it can provide business value that can be monetized? The prevalence of Angular and React would suggest it does indeed provide the latter and that the latter is more valuable to many companies.

Re: Why so many front end developers obsessed with React/Angluar?

#8

Post by sargas » Fri, Mar 25, 2016, 9:18 PM UTC

speg wrote: post #6

sedeki wrote: post #2

Angular is over-engineered and I doubt what they are doing is the right way to go. React, on the other hand, simplifies the stack a lot actually. I don't think we will seriously find a consensus until we get WebAssembly.

Is WebAssembly going to solve anything though? Most of what I've read about it is that it will be an accessory to JavaScript. Things like databases, video encoding, 3D rendering, etc.. Will we really be interfacing with the DOM APIs in C? Even if that is how it plays out, we'll still have a dozen frameworks to decided between, at least one for every language that targets WebAssembly.

Agreed. WebAssembly won't make the JS framework landspace stop from changing. But it maybe he meant to say that with WebAssembly, other languages will be able to be used in the browser, so maybe JS will see less rapid changes.

Re: Why so many front end developers obsessed with React/Angluar?

#9

Post by sedeki » Fri, Mar 25, 2016, 9:20 PM UTC

speg wrote: post #6

sedeki wrote: post #2

Angular is over-engineered and I doubt what they are doing is the right way to go. React, on the other hand, simplifies the stack a lot actually. I don't think we will seriously find a consensus until we get WebAssembly.

Is WebAssembly going to solve anything though? Most of what I've read about it is that it will be an accessory to JavaScript. Things like databases, video encoding, 3D rendering, etc.. Will we really be interfacing with the DOM APIs in C? Even if that is how it plays out, we'll still have a dozen frameworks to decided between, at least one for every language that targets WebAssembly.

As I understand it, we'll have access to the DOM and the various APIs (WebWorkers, etc)...

Of course we won't write apps in some very low level language. But I am guessing that the consensus will converge pretty fast on what (small number of) alternatives we'll use, since we are doing it right this time (I'm hinting at JS).

No, JS won't die. We have fast interpreters now, we can run it on our servers and there is a bunch of people who like it a lot.

Also, there is the issue of backwards compatability.

Re: Why so many front end developers obsessed with React/Angluar?

#10

Post by jarcane » Fri, Mar 25, 2016, 10:04 PM UTC

I do not work directly with React.

I do however, work in ClojureScript, using Reagent, which is an opinionated binding to React with a special emphasis on functional reactive programming.

I discovered the FRP approach through Hoplon, and then soon moved to Reagent, and I must say that it was an absolute godsend.

It is the first real alternative paradigm to interface development in years, and the first one that actually interfaces well with functional programming at the most basic level.

FRP allows you to write an interface in a declarative, functional style that is easy to follow, and largely easy to predict. State is kept to a minimum, and can be organized and localized in sane ways. View updating is basically automated, left to the underlying mechanisms of the virtual DOM.

With CLJS' Hiccup syntax, even defining and passing HTML values becomes painless.

Discovering FRP was basically the same light bulb moment for me as a programmer that discovering Lisp and FP themselves were. I only wish I could find a framework for developing desktop applications that was as easy to learn and use.