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The thing about Fuchs is that he's a very smart guy, who is deeply embedded in the modern JS world, and is absolutely aware of what that code is doing, why it l

by Lazare 10y ago

The thing about Fuchs is that he's a very smart guy, who is deeply embedded in the modern JS world, and is absolutely aware of what that code is doing, why it looks the way it does, why the trend in frameworks has moved the way it has, just how many times the argument he's using has been advanced already, and how thoroughly it's been trashed over the years. He knows that what he's said has been said a thousand times before, and he knows that every time it's said a bunch of people will reply with "separation of concerns, not seperation of technology", and he knows that's a very valid counterargument which can't be refuted in a tweet, which means he also knows how pointless this is. Which in turn means that he's not doing this to start a discussion, but just to get a rise out of people. Giving him the benefit of the doubt, he might actually have an interesting point to add to the debate...but we'll never know, since he thinks a better use of his time is trolling React developers than actually making his case for...whatever it might be. One of the tweets in reply to him hit the nail on the head: https://twitter.com/chrisbarless/status/810918115601158145 https://twitter.com/chrisbarless/status/810918115601158145 Sad. Edit: Scroll through Fuchs' twitter feed right now; he's basically just non-stop trolling. "This is why we can’t have nice things" "Q: What is React? A: It’s PHP, but on the client." "I can see how react is awesome if you build todo apps that do nothing. :)" Then when noting how a million people are disagreeing with him: "I think that means that I’m on to something." No attempt at dialogue, no acknowledgement that there might be alternative viewpoints. Almost every tweet is another dollop of smug arrogance. It must be nice to have so much confidence that you never have to stop and wonder if there might be something new you don't yet know.

mattmanser 10y ago
how thoroughly it's been trashed over the years So often a phrase like this is repeated on HN. React only got released 3 years ago. How could it be "trashed over the years"? Over what years? It barely qualifies for the plural. I seriously wonder sometimes if javascript programmers live in dog years. React apps haven't been in production long, we're only just entering the maintenance phase, now is exactly when we will start seeing the problems with mingling code + UI as the code gets forgotten, opened again, modified, added to and bloats.
- hnnsj 10y ago
  How many years do you need to come up with a counter-argument, or adress the issues claimed for the alternatives (by the React authors and community)? Three years might not be old for a technology, but it seems like a lot of time to actually respond and flesh out this argument. If that really was the author's interest.
  - mattmanser 10y ago
    Not really, it took almost a decade for people to believe that splitting up PHP or ASP pages into modules and UI was easier to maintain. HTML + CSS started in the 90s but it wasn't until the late 00s until strict CSS/HTML separation was regularly practiced. It takes proper experience and years of work to understand why these splits are useful. And React was literally released 3 years, 2 months ago. We're not even taking into account adoption time or anything. How quickly we forget the past I guess. Unless we're talking in javascript years again... EDIT: I actually forget my perspective at times. I have 10+ years experience, I saw all this for real, I worked with HTML with inline style="" tags + style tags in pages + with old-school ASP of pages with loads of inline code (yes, not ASP.Net, ASP) + PHP + VBScript + IE6 + on-element javascript + all the craziness. It was a nightmare to find out what did what. Everything turned confusing very quickly. You never knew quite what did what.
    - hnnsj 10y ago
      I don't disagree with the statement about the importance of experience. But I don't see that that point is relevant here. Here is someone who claims to have gained that experience and learned from it, and now at least gives the impression of aiming to share that knowledge. But that's not what he's doing. He's completely ignoring the fact that there have been many, many responses to the issue he's raising, and maybe he has some good refutation of those responses based on his experience and wisdom, but in that case he does not share it. It just comes off as arrogant and polemic in my opinion. So, yes, experience takes time and is perhaps sometimes the best possible way to learn. But given that you claim to have that experience and therefore some wisdom that is relevant, then it shouldn't take three years to state that. If that is your goal. And if it is literally impossible to formulate the experience and wisdom that you do have into something that can be communicated and taught, yes, then of course every future generation is bound to repeat the same mistakes. How could they not?
Nekorosu 10y ago
I have never seen him as "a very smart guy". The OSS projects he have built are not that complex. But he is persistent and vocal. And yes, he really likes to troll.
freehunter 10y ago
>No attempt at dialogue To be fair, there has never been any effective dialogue on Twitter. 140 characters and out-of-context replies make it impossible.
- ceedan 10y ago
  Not true. I read through twitter arguments/debates multiple times a week.
  - freehunter 10y ago
    And would you say the experience is pleasant? Is it a format that you would choose above all other formats? Rhetoric condensed to 140 characters and displayed in whatever order Twitter felt like showing it in?

by Lazare 10y ago

mattmanser 10y ago

how thoroughly it's been trashed over the years So often a phrase like this is repeated on HN. React only got released 3 years ago. How could it be "trashed over the years"? Over what years? It barely qualifies for the plural. I seriously wonder sometimes if javascript programmers live in dog years. React apps haven't been in production long, we're only just entering the maintenance phase, now is exactly when we will start seeing the problems with mingling code + UI as the code gets forgotten, opened again, modified, added to and bloats.

hnnsj 10y ago
How many years do you need to come up with a counter-argument, or adress the issues claimed for the alternatives (by the React authors and community)? Three years might not be old for a technology, but it seems like a lot of time to actually respond and flesh out this argument. If that really was the author's interest.
- mattmanser 10y ago
  Not really, it took almost a decade for people to believe that splitting up PHP or ASP pages into modules and UI was easier to maintain. HTML + CSS started in the 90s but it wasn't until the late 00s until strict CSS/HTML separation was regularly practiced. It takes proper experience and years of work to understand why these splits are useful. And React was literally released 3 years, 2 months ago. We're not even taking into account adoption time or anything. How quickly we forget the past I guess. Unless we're talking in javascript years again... EDIT: I actually forget my perspective at times. I have 10+ years experience, I saw all this for real, I worked with HTML with inline style="" tags + style tags in pages + with old-school ASP of pages with loads of inline code (yes, not ASP.Net, ASP) + PHP + VBScript + IE6 + on-element javascript + all the craziness. It was a nightmare to find out what did what. Everything turned confusing very quickly. You never knew quite what did what.
  - hnnsj 10y ago
    I don't disagree with the statement about the importance of experience. But I don't see that that point is relevant here. Here is someone who claims to have gained that experience and learned from it, and now at least gives the impression of aiming to share that knowledge. But that's not what he's doing. He's completely ignoring the fact that there have been many, many responses to the issue he's raising, and maybe he has some good refutation of those responses based on his experience and wisdom, but in that case he does not share it. It just comes off as arrogant and polemic in my opinion. So, yes, experience takes time and is perhaps sometimes the best possible way to learn. But given that you claim to have that experience and therefore some wisdom that is relevant, then it shouldn't take three years to state that. If that is your goal. And if it is literally impossible to formulate the experience and wisdom that you do have into something that can be communicated and taught, yes, then of course every future generation is bound to repeat the same mistakes. How could they not?

Nekorosu 10y ago

I have never seen him as "a very smart guy". The OSS projects he have built are not that complex. But he is persistent and vocal. And yes, he really likes to troll.

freehunter 10y ago

>No attempt at dialogue To be fair, there has never been any effective dialogue on Twitter. 140 characters and out-of-context replies make it impossible.

ceedan 10y ago
Not true. I read through twitter arguments/debates multiple times a week.
- freehunter 10y ago
  And would you say the experience is pleasant? Is it a format that you would choose above all other formats? Rhetoric condensed to 140 characters and displayed in whatever order Twitter felt like showing it in?