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Why React over rails front-end? It seems like it adds undue complication. What’s the real benefit? Basecamp works great and it’s a rails front end. Rails make f

Why React over rails front-end? It seems like it adds undue complication. What’s the real benefit? Basecamp works great and it’s a rails front end. Rails make full stack development pretty easy.

hosh 8y ago
React buys you two things: (1) reusable components (2) React Native https://thinkster.io/tutorials/what-exactly-is-react https://thinkster.io/tutorials/what-exactly-is-react It's major criticism: there is a kernel of truth in the joke that React is a dressed-up PHP (in the sense of how you put the components together) Some other options are Vue and Elm.
- tptacek 8y ago
  It's been a long time since I wrote or even had to look at PHP, but I have done work in PHP. I use React constantly. I do not see any similarities between the two, like, at all.
  - hosh 8y ago
    Yeah, I was shocked when I first heard of it. But when I thought it about it, it makes sense: https://www.reddit.com/r/reactjs/comments/58wmnz/so_reactjs_is_basically_just_clientside_php/ https://www.reddit.com/r/reactjs/comments/58wmnz/so_reactjs_...
    - hosh 8y ago
      Here's another comment from that reddit thread: "If you're at all familiar with the history of React, there's actually some amount of truth to this. React grew out of an internal PHP extension at Facebook called XHP. See the recent post describing React's history at https://facebook.github.io/react/blog/2016/09/28/our-first-50000-stars.html https://facebook.github.io/react/blog/2016/09/28/our-first-5... for more details." "That said, the parallels only go so far. PHP is frequently rather unstructured, while React lends itself to some very specific structures. I don't think I'd necessarily say that PHP typically involves "recursively breaking down parts of the page". But sure, some similarities. (Then again, just about anything that involves template-ish work has some similarities... )"
      - tptacek 8y ago
        That blog post section describes JSX, not React. JSX is just a notation.
hnzix 8y ago
You can have the best of both worlds and use webpacker to mix React or VueJS into the Rails frontend where it makes sense, eg complex forms or widgets. Many webapps are not Facebookish and don't need to be SPA blobs, with all the additional complexity, SEO and accessibility costs.
dyeje 8y ago
It really depends on the application. If you're making something that has a highly interactive UI, then React is a great tool for that. It doesn't have to be all or nothing though, you can use Rails server side rendering with React components for the complicated stuff. Basecamp is not a fair comparison, they use Stimulus which is their own frontend framework.

Why React over rails front-end? It seems like it adds undue complication. What’s the real benefit? Basecamp works great and it’s a rails front end. Rails make full stack development pretty easy.

hosh 8y ago

React buys you two things: (1) reusable components (2) React Native https://thinkster.io/tutorials/what-exactly-is-react https://thinkster.io/tutorials/what-exactly-is-react It's major criticism: there is a kernel of truth in the joke that React is a dressed-up PHP (in the sense of how you put the components together) Some other options are Vue and Elm.

tptacek 8y ago
It's been a long time since I wrote or even had to look at PHP, but I have done work in PHP. I use React constantly. I do not see any similarities between the two, like, at all.
- hosh 8y ago
  Yeah, I was shocked when I first heard of it. But when I thought it about it, it makes sense: https://www.reddit.com/r/reactjs/comments/58wmnz/so_reactjs_is_basically_just_clientside_php/ https://www.reddit.com/r/reactjs/comments/58wmnz/so_reactjs_...
  - hosh 8y ago
    Here's another comment from that reddit thread: "If you're at all familiar with the history of React, there's actually some amount of truth to this. React grew out of an internal PHP extension at Facebook called XHP. See the recent post describing React's history at https://facebook.github.io/react/blog/2016/09/28/our-first-50000-stars.html https://facebook.github.io/react/blog/2016/09/28/our-first-5... for more details." "That said, the parallels only go so far. PHP is frequently rather unstructured, while React lends itself to some very specific structures. I don't think I'd necessarily say that PHP typically involves "recursively breaking down parts of the page". But sure, some similarities. (Then again, just about anything that involves template-ish work has some similarities... )"
    - tptacek 8y ago
      That blog post section describes JSX, not React. JSX is just a notation.

hnzix 8y ago

You can have the best of both worlds and use webpacker to mix React or VueJS into the Rails frontend where it makes sense, eg complex forms or widgets. Many webapps are not Facebookish and don't need to be SPA blobs, with all the additional complexity, SEO and accessibility costs.

dyeje 8y ago

It really depends on the application. If you're making something that has a highly interactive UI, then React is a great tool for that. It doesn't have to be all or nothing though, you can use Rails server side rendering with React components for the complicated stuff. Basecamp is not a fair comparison, they use Stimulus which is their own frontend framework.