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I don't think it is easy to dabble in React starting at zero knowledge of all these frameworks. Vue is just accessible and familiar enough to be more approachab

I don't think it is easy to dabble in React starting at zero knowledge of all these frameworks. Vue is just accessible and familiar enough to be more approachable at first. When buiding an internal app I took a long hard look at React, but ended up with Vue. I had previously used Angular 1.x. I know I see this said a lot but the comprehensibility of these frameworks and tooling is borderline impossible to deal with for dabblers. Docs break almost instantly (Angular 2.x). It is hard to manage the number of small ever changing tools, even when you understand the principles. I think if you took someone with good knowledge of C and good knowledge of Javascript (NOT web), just the base languages it would be easier getting into systems programming!

cyberferret 10y ago
I should clarify, that my definition of 'dabbling' is usually to build an actual app with it. I will usually try and build an app that I have already done in another language, just to get familiar with the new language oddities etc. Funny that you mentioned AngularJS - I built quite a few apps using the Ionic Framework a couple of years back, and that is (was) built upon Angular 1. I found Angular quite easy to pick up and run with. React, not so much. But its all OK. I am sure React is a great framework and all, just not my taste...
- bitexploder 10y ago
  I am with you. I often want to enjoy the magic of something like React, but when your entire coding task is a man day or two it becomes really hard to justify learning React. That is my main gripe, many would just say that means "React is not for you" and technically that is obviously true. But in reality it is just the immature tooling around everything getting in the way. It is all in such a state of flux and experimentation that you can't always do things that should be simple simply. I think developers often do their own work disservice by not being a little more careful with dependencies, basically. Someone spends a few days wrangling a pile of NPM packages, build frameworks, and minifiers into this magical state that lets them operate very productively, but it isn't scaleable productivity in that now you have forced the whole developer community to do this multi day learning battle. And now as your whole pile of JS evolves under you, you are committed to this stack and keeping up with the evolution of all the dependencies. You end up with a lot of "least bad" solutions that aren't actually very good to the core problem. I see that as React's biggest problem with adoption. The core model is actually really great, but the usability is a steep learning curve.

cyberferret 10y ago

I should clarify, that my definition of 'dabbling' is usually to build an actual app with it. I will usually try and build an app that I have already done in another language, just to get familiar with the new language oddities etc. Funny that you mentioned AngularJS - I built quite a few apps using the Ionic Framework a couple of years back, and that is (was) built upon Angular 1. I found Angular quite easy to pick up and run with. React, not so much. But its all OK. I am sure React is a great framework and all, just not my taste...

bitexploder 10y ago
I am with you. I often want to enjoy the magic of something like React, but when your entire coding task is a man day or two it becomes really hard to justify learning React. That is my main gripe, many would just say that means "React is not for you" and technically that is obviously true. But in reality it is just the immature tooling around everything getting in the way. It is all in such a state of flux and experimentation that you can't always do things that should be simple simply. I think developers often do their own work disservice by not being a little more careful with dependencies, basically. Someone spends a few days wrangling a pile of NPM packages, build frameworks, and minifiers into this magical state that lets them operate very productively, but it isn't scaleable productivity in that now you have forced the whole developer community to do this multi day learning battle. And now as your whole pile of JS evolves under you, you are committed to this stack and keeping up with the evolution of all the dependencies. You end up with a lot of "least bad" solutions that aren't actually very good to the core problem. I see that as React's biggest problem with adoption. The core model is actually really great, but the usability is a steep learning curve.