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Agreed, Dan's videos are great! Sometimes I've found people still thinking there's some magic going on inside Redux, so I just wanted to do my best to remove th

by jdeal 9y ago

Agreed, Dan's videos are great! Sometimes I've found people still thinking there's some magic going on inside Redux, so I just wanted to do my best to remove that.

gavinpc 9y ago
Last summer I said to myself, "Okay I need to know what all the fuss is about." So I sat down and read the Redux source. I thought, "This is it?" It does almost nothing but issue loquacious console warnings when you're doing something you're not supposed to. My conclusions were: - it's as much of a discipline than a tool - the complexity must be added by the middleware
- ashark 9y ago
  The complexity is mostly from people approaching it from a confusing direction. Some of the naming is confusing ("action", but actually it's an event or message, is the worst one). Somehow everyone comes away from the tutorials and docs thinking that the typical code structure used in them has to be how you do it (see many of the complaints on this very page) as if it's much more a framework than a library. I had a similar experience with it coming in to a recently-started React Native project at work, having not seen React, React Native, or Redux before. At first I was fairly confused (see: awful terminology, painful example code which everyone seems to take as gospel and which had, in fact, invaded our codebase). Then I started to get an inkling that I was being tricked. I looked closer and... it's two event dispatchers. One of which it's mostly up to you to implement (the reducer). Plus a really short list of suggestions for how to write the code (mainly: don't screw with state in certain places/ways). That's it. It's paper thin and dead simple, but somehow most people come away from the tutorials and docs hopelessly confused. I think there's something deeply and perhaps irredeemably wrong with the docs/tutorials and with the way Redux's proselytizers communicate. I can't figure out how else they could manage to confuse so many people about such a simple thing.
  - acemarke 9y ago
    You've said that several times, and I'm genuinely asking: how should the docs handle things differently? If you have ideas and suggestions, _please_ file an issue or a PR and help us improve them!
    - shados 9y ago
      The docs are fine. Redux is just a victim of its popularity. A lot of people jumping on it are people who are used to things like Rails, where there's one way to do things, every little bit of boilerplate is abstracted away (and if you don't want to do things this way, you're screwed) and you don't ask questions why. Redux is the polar opposite. No amount of documentation will change that. The faster we accept that not every tool is the right one for everyone, the faster we can make better tools that are great and some stuff instead of being mediocre at everything.
      - acemarke 9y ago
        I know it's not for everyone, and I know discussions won't convince everyone. I'd just like people who are complaining about the docs to offer some constructive help :)

by jdeal 9y ago

Agreed, Dan's videos are great! Sometimes I've found people still thinking there's some magic going on inside Redux, so I just wanted to do my best to remove that.

gavinpc 9y ago

Last summer I said to myself, "Okay I need to know what all the fuss is about." So I sat down and read the Redux source. I thought, "This is it?" It does almost nothing but issue loquacious console warnings when you're doing something you're not supposed to. My conclusions were: - it's as much of a discipline than a tool - the complexity must be added by the middleware

ashark 9y ago
The complexity is mostly from people approaching it from a confusing direction. Some of the naming is confusing ("action", but actually it's an event or message, is the worst one). Somehow everyone comes away from the tutorials and docs thinking that the typical code structure used in them has to be how you do it (see many of the complaints on this very page) as if it's much more a framework than a library. I had a similar experience with it coming in to a recently-started React Native project at work, having not seen React, React Native, or Redux before. At first I was fairly confused (see: awful terminology, painful example code which everyone seems to take as gospel and which had, in fact, invaded our codebase). Then I started to get an inkling that I was being tricked. I looked closer and... it's two event dispatchers. One of which it's mostly up to you to implement (the reducer). Plus a really short list of suggestions for how to write the code (mainly: don't screw with state in certain places/ways). That's it. It's paper thin and dead simple, but somehow most people come away from the tutorials and docs hopelessly confused. I think there's something deeply and perhaps irredeemably wrong with the docs/tutorials and with the way Redux's proselytizers communicate. I can't figure out how else they could manage to confuse so many people about such a simple thing.
- acemarke 9y ago
  You've said that several times, and I'm genuinely asking: how should the docs handle things differently? If you have ideas and suggestions, _please_ file an issue or a PR and help us improve them!
  - shados 9y ago
    The docs are fine. Redux is just a victim of its popularity. A lot of people jumping on it are people who are used to things like Rails, where there's one way to do things, every little bit of boilerplate is abstracted away (and if you don't want to do things this way, you're screwed) and you don't ask questions why. Redux is the polar opposite. No amount of documentation will change that. The faster we accept that not every tool is the right one for everyone, the faster we can make better tools that are great and some stuff instead of being mediocre at everything.
    - acemarke 9y ago
      I know it's not for everyone, and I know discussions won't convince everyone. I'd just like people who are complaining about the docs to offer some constructive help :)