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React itself is pretty simple and very nice to work with. The whole react/redux/react-redux/react-router/react-router-redux/webpack/babel/flow agglomeration on

React itself is pretty simple and very nice to work with. The whole react/redux/react-redux/react-router/react-router-redux/webpack/babel/flow agglomeration on the other hand is a lot more complex and subject to a lot of api churn. But you can actually get pretty far just using React by itself. Don't adopt other parts of this stack until you actually really need them and you can go pretty far with just a few concepts. And yes, React is as much a technique for building UI as it is a particular implementation. Learning and using React has also improved the iOS code I write.

liamzebedee 10y ago
Fully-agree. From the start, Netflix was talking about React being useful because you can drop it in to various pages without affecting other UI views. I use it at work on a page-by-page basis-- it drastically reduces the mental overhead of class naming, JQuery spaghetti, maintaining the DOM etc. Sometimes I even surprise myself when something "just works" because of React's well-controlled model.
- rubber_duck 10y ago
  >Fully-agree. From the start, Netflix was talking about React being useful because you can drop it in to various pages without affecting other UI views. This is Reacts greatest strength and a huge design constraint they had from day one. On the other hand it's a tradeoff and as everyone mentioned not having the whole stack under "one roof" brings a lot of tedious crap. If you need something to incrementally rewrite parts of your frontend React would probably the best choice. If you need something to start your project on I'd consider other options, Angular 2 and Aurelia for example.
chatmasta 10y ago
Why not take your comment a step further? That is, you can get pretty far using plain js `createElement` and similar functions. In fact I've created a fairly complex SPA without using any external libraries. Don't use react until you absolutely need it! Back in the day, jQuery was amazing because it made selecting and manipulating DOM elements easy. But now, plain JS has mostly caught up to that functionality, to the point that it rarely makes sense to use jQuery over plain JS. I wonder if in a few years the same will be true of much of the functionality in react.
- davelnewton 10y ago
  No, because "plain JS" isn't a UI framework. We're moving closer to having real GUIs in the browser (e.g., Java Swing) but that's not a function of the language, but the plumbing around the language. Swing isn't Java, Swing is written in Java.
  - chatmasta 10y ago
    If you use createElement, appendChild, and innerHTML, you can replicate a lot of the functionality of react. In fact react probably uses a lot of that under the hood. Of course for more complex applications, react is cleaner. But for relatively simple components, manually manipulating the DOM like this might be worth skipping the overhead of react.
    - davelnewton 10y ago
      Yep, agree entirely, although I wouldn't advocate mixing the two in a single application--mixing mechanisms is added cognitive overhead. But again, JS is just a language, that happens to have an interface into a DOM (in some environments). It's not a framework that guides you in how to organize and architect an app. It's possible to write maintainable, high-performance, complex apps using plain JS. Adding a few simple layers makes it a lot easier, though, and I'd argue that the current crop of client-side frameworks make it easier still. Simple apps == simple code. Complex apps == complex code, regardless of the tools used to create it. Underneath everything, after all, is still just plain JS.
      - chatmasta 10y ago
        Well then to return to your original point that redux/webpage/flux/blahblah are overkill and you shouldn't use them until you need them, you can make the same argument. They are more layers that guide you in "how to organize and architect an app." The tradeoff is that you get simpler code in exchange for more architectural overhead and a more complex build process.
vbezhenar 10y ago
> Don't adopt other parts of this stack until you actually really need them and you can go pretty far with just a few concepts. Redux is very core concept. You'll have to rewrite half of an application, unless you use it from the start. Routing is essential for any serious web site, so you have to implement it one way or another, and not using working libraries looks strange. Same about babel — either use it from the start or rewrite half of code later (or have a mess). Also I think that babel currently the way to process JSX, so unless you avoiding JSX (which would be very strange), you have to use it anyway. I don't agree, that you can avoid all this stuff, unless you are just learning on throwaway pet projects or willing to reimplement a lot of things which are already have good enough implementation.
- brightball 10y ago
  I'd tend to agree with the parent here. Then appeal of React is that it's one piece where everyone else is trying to develop a full stack. Your needs for that single piece will be more consistent across projects that are either legacy or new. A full frontend stack is total overkill for the vast majority of projects that fall under the "open, check, close" use case. So many of the perks of those frontend stacks, such as keeping data in the browser and only reloading certain parts are based on the slow load times of a full frontend stack if you don't do all of those things. Being able to use pure React both client and server side without anything else is a fairly significant perk.
cel1ne 10y ago
What I need in every project is react for the UI, babel for modern JS and webpack. (I went through combinations of gulp, browserify, requirejs and brunch. Webpack finally solved the packaging-mess for me). Redux is something you can implement yourself easily, I never understood the need for a library there. The good idea of redux is to have a serialisable state which is changed through events. This gives you unidirectional data-flow and the ability to pause/restore your application. Complete immutability and funneling everything through functions on the other hand often just obscures readability, and, in case you are using immutablejs, gives you terrible performance. If I want to have purely functional programs I don't use Javascript, but Haskell or something. If I need time-travelling debugging, which I never found very useful when dealing with complex states, I'll implement it by copying my state using serialization.
lcarlson 10y ago
Just use mvc, page js and fetch: github.com/lancecarlson/React-MVC

liamzebedee 10y ago

Fully-agree. From the start, Netflix was talking about React being useful because you can drop it in to various pages without affecting other UI views. I use it at work on a page-by-page basis-- it drastically reduces the mental overhead of class naming, JQuery spaghetti, maintaining the DOM etc. Sometimes I even surprise myself when something "just works" because of React's well-controlled model.

rubber_duck 10y ago
>Fully-agree. From the start, Netflix was talking about React being useful because you can drop it in to various pages without affecting other UI views. This is Reacts greatest strength and a huge design constraint they had from day one. On the other hand it's a tradeoff and as everyone mentioned not having the whole stack under "one roof" brings a lot of tedious crap. If you need something to incrementally rewrite parts of your frontend React would probably the best choice. If you need something to start your project on I'd consider other options, Angular 2 and Aurelia for example.

chatmasta 10y ago

Why not take your comment a step further? That is, you can get pretty far using plain js `createElement` and similar functions. In fact I've created a fairly complex SPA without using any external libraries. Don't use react until you absolutely need it! Back in the day, jQuery was amazing because it made selecting and manipulating DOM elements easy. But now, plain JS has mostly caught up to that functionality, to the point that it rarely makes sense to use jQuery over plain JS. I wonder if in a few years the same will be true of much of the functionality in react.

davelnewton 10y ago
No, because "plain JS" isn't a UI framework. We're moving closer to having real GUIs in the browser (e.g., Java Swing) but that's not a function of the language, but the plumbing around the language. Swing isn't Java, Swing is written in Java.
- chatmasta 10y ago
  If you use createElement, appendChild, and innerHTML, you can replicate a lot of the functionality of react. In fact react probably uses a lot of that under the hood. Of course for more complex applications, react is cleaner. But for relatively simple components, manually manipulating the DOM like this might be worth skipping the overhead of react.
  - davelnewton 10y ago
    Yep, agree entirely, although I wouldn't advocate mixing the two in a single application--mixing mechanisms is added cognitive overhead. But again, JS is just a language, that happens to have an interface into a DOM (in some environments). It's not a framework that guides you in how to organize and architect an app. It's possible to write maintainable, high-performance, complex apps using plain JS. Adding a few simple layers makes it a lot easier, though, and I'd argue that the current crop of client-side frameworks make it easier still. Simple apps == simple code. Complex apps == complex code, regardless of the tools used to create it. Underneath everything, after all, is still just plain JS.
    - chatmasta 10y ago
      Well then to return to your original point that redux/webpage/flux/blahblah are overkill and you shouldn't use them until you need them, you can make the same argument. They are more layers that guide you in "how to organize and architect an app." The tradeoff is that you get simpler code in exchange for more architectural overhead and a more complex build process.

vbezhenar 10y ago

> Don't adopt other parts of this stack until you actually really need them and you can go pretty far with just a few concepts. Redux is very core concept. You'll have to rewrite half of an application, unless you use it from the start. Routing is essential for any serious web site, so you have to implement it one way or another, and not using working libraries looks strange. Same about babel — either use it from the start or rewrite half of code later (or have a mess). Also I think that babel currently the way to process JSX, so unless you avoiding JSX (which would be very strange), you have to use it anyway. I don't agree, that you can avoid all this stuff, unless you are just learning on throwaway pet projects or willing to reimplement a lot of things which are already have good enough implementation.

brightball 10y ago
I'd tend to agree with the parent here. Then appeal of React is that it's one piece where everyone else is trying to develop a full stack. Your needs for that single piece will be more consistent across projects that are either legacy or new. A full frontend stack is total overkill for the vast majority of projects that fall under the "open, check, close" use case. So many of the perks of those frontend stacks, such as keeping data in the browser and only reloading certain parts are based on the slow load times of a full frontend stack if you don't do all of those things. Being able to use pure React both client and server side without anything else is a fairly significant perk.

cel1ne 10y ago

What I need in every project is react for the UI, babel for modern JS and webpack. (I went through combinations of gulp, browserify, requirejs and brunch. Webpack finally solved the packaging-mess for me). Redux is something you can implement yourself easily, I never understood the need for a library there. The good idea of redux is to have a serialisable state which is changed through events. This gives you unidirectional data-flow and the ability to pause/restore your application. Complete immutability and funneling everything through functions on the other hand often just obscures readability, and, in case you are using immutablejs, gives you terrible performance. If I want to have purely functional programs I don't use Javascript, but Haskell or something. If I need time-travelling debugging, which I never found very useful when dealing with complex states, I'll implement it by copying my state using serialization.

lcarlson 10y ago

Just use mvc, page js and fetch: github.com/lancecarlson/React-MVC