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Parent's paste bin is ~40 lines of code (with white space) consisting of 4 functions, with what? 4 loops. If you consider 40LOC complex I don't understand why

Parent's paste bin is ~40 lines of code (with white space) consisting of 4 functions, with what? 4 loops. If you consider 40LOC complex I don't understand why you work as a dev.

jasim 10y ago
> If you consider 40LOC complex I don't understand why you work as a dev. Goodness, your snark that questions the parent's competence is not only unwarranted, it is based on an incomplete understanding of the value of abstractions in programming. It is not about 40 lines of code, it is about a basic programming model that allows us to understand and create user interfaces irrespective of how complex or large it is. It lets you compose your UI based on a tree of state and pure functions. If you don't have this abstraction, you do not have a coherent programming model to build UIs.
- drdaeman 10y ago
  Actually, I wonder if there's something out there that has all the declarative state-to-DOM manipulation goodness, but does this at build time. React is a runtime that works on the client, and its compile-time stuff is just syntax sugar (JSX) and some minor optimizations. As I understand, this runtime is the complexity that some complain about. At least I perceive this as a downside. If there's something that can, given a component definition, generate those sets of add/update/remove functions and appropriate calls on state updates (preferably, as human-readable as possible) - I think that would be interesting to see and compare. (I hope no one normally dynamically mutates their components at runtime?)
  - jasim 10y ago
    https://svelte.technology/ https://svelte.technology/ is what you're looking for. I haven't ever used it because I find React quite adequate. I share your concern about the complex runtime layer that React introduces, and it is getting even more complex with the introduction of Fiber. However, the test of an abstraction is whether it leaks undesirably, and whether it lets you escape to the lower layers when you need to. React scores well on both counts. So while the implementation might be complex and will get even more elaborate over time, the abstraction is as water-tight as I can hope. In that case complex implementations with better performance might even be a good thing. Also, I strolled through the React codebase in its early days and found it eminently understandable. So if it ever comes to it, I'm confident I can contribute a patch for the things I need with enough time and effort.

Parent's paste bin is ~40 lines of code (with white space) consisting of 4 functions, with what? 4 loops. If you consider 40LOC complex I don't understand why you work as a dev.

jasim 10y ago

> If you consider 40LOC complex I don't understand why you work as a dev. Goodness, your snark that questions the parent's competence is not only unwarranted, it is based on an incomplete understanding of the value of abstractions in programming. It is not about 40 lines of code, it is about a basic programming model that allows us to understand and create user interfaces irrespective of how complex or large it is. It lets you compose your UI based on a tree of state and pure functions. If you don't have this abstraction, you do not have a coherent programming model to build UIs.

drdaeman 10y ago
Actually, I wonder if there's something out there that has all the declarative state-to-DOM manipulation goodness, but does this at build time. React is a runtime that works on the client, and its compile-time stuff is just syntax sugar (JSX) and some minor optimizations. As I understand, this runtime is the complexity that some complain about. At least I perceive this as a downside. If there's something that can, given a component definition, generate those sets of add/update/remove functions and appropriate calls on state updates (preferably, as human-readable as possible) - I think that would be interesting to see and compare. (I hope no one normally dynamically mutates their components at runtime?)
- jasim 10y ago
  https://svelte.technology/ https://svelte.technology/ is what you're looking for. I haven't ever used it because I find React quite adequate. I share your concern about the complex runtime layer that React introduces, and it is getting even more complex with the introduction of Fiber. However, the test of an abstraction is whether it leaks undesirably, and whether it lets you escape to the lower layers when you need to. React scores well on both counts. So while the implementation might be complex and will get even more elaborate over time, the abstraction is as water-tight as I can hope. In that case complex implementations with better performance might even be a good thing. Also, I strolled through the React codebase in its early days and found it eminently understandable. So if it ever comes to it, I'm confident I can contribute a patch for the things I need with enough time and effort.