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The more I am studying React + Redux, the more it becomes apparent to me that it's over engineered for an individual and even a small team. It feels like the Ja

The more I am studying React + Redux, the more it becomes apparent to me that it's over engineered for an individual and even a small team. It feels like the Java Swing days where verbosity and architectural opinion dominates all in the name of cross-platformity. Another minus is that you no longer use the existing conventions that stood the test of time, HTML and CSS. It's now JSX and you have to write boilerplate JS code just to show a simple hello world example. On top of that it poses barriers for designers who only had to worry about how the HTML/CSS looks, now additional work has to go into splitting everything into myriad logical pieces which really have no impact on the overall productivity or quality. And that's only for the React view side, the real beast is Redux. That simple grid table you could get away with using jqGrid is now a 10 week job involving multiple engineers. I'm curious to know if anyone found any enlightment working with Vue.js and whether something like Redux makes sense to hold states of the app or if they got away with it.

duderific 10y ago
React/Redux solves a specific problem: managing state and DOM rendering in a complex single page app. If you don't have that specific problem, you probably shouldn't use that combination of technologies. If you do, you can use React/Redux or any of the other technologies out there (Angular, Vue etc.).
greenspot 10y ago
Getting into React is kind of mixed bag. The core concepts are easy to understand and compared to other frameworks lean. JSX is easy, components are trivial but once you try to get productive, wow, it's not that simple anymore. It's more than a bit of HTML embedded in JS. So, you need really to spend time to understand the core of React very, very well. And this takes time, effort and at least a couple of real and serious apps you should write to understand why React and its concept are the next step in FE dev and why others use React's concept as blueprint (e.g. Inferno). Tutorials are not enough, real projects are the best way to grok React. I don't think it's like Java Swing, not at all (I think the comparison is misleading since React is from the ground very different, e.g. totally different design patterns/paradigms, .g. no observer pattern, and a super minimal API). It's a tool which is super flexible. It's definitely not your daddy's jQuery-based front-end framework which let you start quickly. But once you get more experienced with React you face much better code maintainability with a small code base already. Further, you should be good at JS and ES6. I guess this might be another obstacle for many. Compared to Vue which I like a lot and which shares also some similarities, Vue is more complex due to a large API surface, code-in-HTML templating syntax, nested instance semantics, observable gotchas, ES5 workarounds and a larger documentation that is absolutely vital to read and understand. Give React a try. You need of course a real use case. Many website's use cases don't require React and could be done with some simple server-side rendering. So, React is def not the best tool of every job. I was ignoring React too long by just using it for some toy projects or going through tutorials. This was not enough. Once I tried React for a real project, I learned its brilliance and I don't want to go back to anything else for SPAs or websites with more interactivity.
- brilliantcode 10y ago
  what about redux? can you do away with Redux and if so what do people use instead?
_up 10y ago
I have the same impression. I also tried Angular1 and found it also overly complicated. Currently I am using Teleriks Kendo UI Core (Core is Open Source) and find it a lot more intuitive. Especially the Template and Routing stuff. Also a huge Fan of their "Web Debugger" Fiddler.
joeyprr 10y ago
You want enlightenment? Ignore the frameworks/JS hype. "It's now JSX and you have to write boilerplate JS code just to show a simple hello world example." This is absolute insanity. It's time for a re-discovery of “vanilla” HTML, CSS, with a sprinkling of "vanilla" JS from the ground up without any frameworks. I mean.. this website doesn't even seem to work as intended: http://imgur.com/LdRFS4L http://imgur.com/LdRFS4L
- arcticfox 10y ago
  Are you using noscript or something? it looks great for me.
kapv89 10y ago
Stop using redux. Try and use react independently. You'll realize redux is completely unneeded. In fact, even flux is unneeded.

duderific 10y ago

React/Redux solves a specific problem: managing state and DOM rendering in a complex single page app. If you don't have that specific problem, you probably shouldn't use that combination of technologies. If you do, you can use React/Redux or any of the other technologies out there (Angular, Vue etc.).

greenspot 10y ago

Getting into React is kind of mixed bag. The core concepts are easy to understand and compared to other frameworks lean. JSX is easy, components are trivial but once you try to get productive, wow, it's not that simple anymore. It's more than a bit of HTML embedded in JS. So, you need really to spend time to understand the core of React very, very well. And this takes time, effort and at least a couple of real and serious apps you should write to understand why React and its concept are the next step in FE dev and why others use React's concept as blueprint (e.g. Inferno). Tutorials are not enough, real projects are the best way to grok React. I don't think it's like Java Swing, not at all (I think the comparison is misleading since React is from the ground very different, e.g. totally different design patterns/paradigms, .g. no observer pattern, and a super minimal API). It's a tool which is super flexible. It's definitely not your daddy's jQuery-based front-end framework which let you start quickly. But once you get more experienced with React you face much better code maintainability with a small code base already. Further, you should be good at JS and ES6. I guess this might be another obstacle for many. Compared to Vue which I like a lot and which shares also some similarities, Vue is more complex due to a large API surface, code-in-HTML templating syntax, nested instance semantics, observable gotchas, ES5 workarounds and a larger documentation that is absolutely vital to read and understand. Give React a try. You need of course a real use case. Many website's use cases don't require React and could be done with some simple server-side rendering. So, React is def not the best tool of every job. I was ignoring React too long by just using it for some toy projects or going through tutorials. This was not enough. Once I tried React for a real project, I learned its brilliance and I don't want to go back to anything else for SPAs or websites with more interactivity.

brilliantcode 10y ago
what about redux? can you do away with Redux and if so what do people use instead?

_up 10y ago

I have the same impression. I also tried Angular1 and found it also overly complicated. Currently I am using Teleriks Kendo UI Core (Core is Open Source) and find it a lot more intuitive. Especially the Template and Routing stuff. Also a huge Fan of their "Web Debugger" Fiddler.

joeyprr 10y ago

You want enlightenment? Ignore the frameworks/JS hype. "It's now JSX and you have to write boilerplate JS code just to show a simple hello world example." This is absolute insanity. It's time for a re-discovery of “vanilla” HTML, CSS, with a sprinkling of "vanilla" JS from the ground up without any frameworks. I mean.. this website doesn't even seem to work as intended: http://imgur.com/LdRFS4L http://imgur.com/LdRFS4L

arcticfox 10y ago
Are you using noscript or something? it looks great for me.

kapv89 10y ago

Stop using redux. Try and use react independently. You'll realize redux is completely unneeded. In fact, even flux is unneeded.