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I just briefly looked at the examples (and of course followed the twitter boom about it), but what I am not getting is that to me it looks like since useState()

by kmarc 8y ago

I just briefly looked at the examples (and of course followed the twitter boom about it), but what I am not getting is that to me it looks like since useState() is against the principles of pure functional programming. I understand that it implements some kind of inversion-of-control, but just looking at the code it feels like using some global object's method which is a big no-no. Also this importance of ordering reminds me the unmaintainable magic hell of Angular. Maybe I'm just missing the "explicit-over-implicit" concept here. What's your opinion on this?

danabramov 8y ago
I suggest you to read about algebraic effects. We don't have them in JavaScript, but conceptually that's what Hooks represent. (This is as functional as it gets.) React has always been about taking useful ideas from functional programming and bringing it to mainstream through pragmatic choices in JS. Your concern about the "globalness" is addressed in Sebastian's comment which is linked five times throughout the post — you should definitely check it out! https://github.com/reactjs/rfcs/pull/68#issuecomment-439314884 https://github.com/reactjs/rfcs/pull/68#issuecomment-4393148... Finally, don't forget you're comparing Hooks to classes. Those are hardly functional either.
asark 8y ago
It's not a global object—it's an instance of the object for the component you're using. The whole thing's a terrible OOP system in a language that already has a built-in mediocre OOP system, which terrible OOP system is, in the end, just a(n inefficient) pass-through to same built-in mediocre OOP system. The posters here wondering why you can't name them are on to something. I assume it's because then it'd be too obvious that's what they're doing, and whoever's paying people on that team (I really hope it's not more than one person, it's not hard work, but it probably is) might notice and make them stop, and maybe the React team at FB would even shrink in size, and we can't have that. I'm not sure what other explanation there could be for such comically-wasteful sandcastle building. I assume it's a combination of individual incentives to work on something not-difficult but flashy and prominent, with project incentives to never need fewer people than they currently have.
- danabramov 8y ago
  >The posters here wondering why you can't name them are on to something Can’t name what? Not sure I follow. >I really hope it's not more than one person, it's not hard work, but it probably is We had from 5 to 8 people on the team at different times. Maybe maintaining one of the most popular open source projects isn’t “hard work” for you but we find it challenging. >I'm not sure what other explanation there could be for such comically-wasteful sandcastle building. We try to solve problems that product engineers run into. If you have better ideas we’d love to hear them.
  - asark 8y ago
    >The posters here wondering why you can't name them are on to something Imprecise phrasing on my part, the discussion here has been around naming hooks with Symbols. > We had from 5 to 8 people on the team at different times. Maybe maintaining one of the most popular open source projects isn’t “hard work” for you but we find it challenging. I meant React Hooks specifically, not Redux, which I assume is what you mean here. > We try to solve problems that product engineers run into. If you have better ideas we’d love to hear them. Use the built-in OOP system instead of writing a worse new one? Reinventing methods and properties with poor, misleading syntax as a thin layer over the OOP system of the host language is... well, it's helping bloggers, I guess.
    - danabramov 8y ago
      I’d love to hear about your solutions but maybe don’t be so quick to dismiss other people’s hard work as something to “help bloggers”. If we were chatting face to face would you also behave like this? We’re very open to good technical arguments but this isn’t one.
      - asark 8y ago
        > If we were chatting face to face would you also behave like this? Maybe? I usually very much would not, of course, but JS "culture" creates significant irritation and wasted time for me daily, and has for years, especially in React-land, since that's where the money is lately so it's hard to avoid. The only other software that gets me this exasperated is anything Poettering thinks up, but at least I don't personally have to work closely with any of that daily (any more, and for now). I'm sure I'll have to deal with hooks when people around me start using them. It's less that I'm upset that they exist than I feel like I'm being gaslighted. I've read the docs, and the source, because, again, I have to know this stuff. After the initial disbelief wore off I had a good laugh, like, actual LOL. This thread is the first of many I at that moment predicted I'd see as people who really, really in their hearts and in their actual technical needs and in the language they're using, just needed OOP, but are on the JS-must-be-functional-at-all-costs hype train, expressing frustration and confusion over this feature and burning lots of time trying to sort out how OOP works when you're trying so hard to not type "this" and pretending it's something else. It's a less-useful and confusing replacement for OO that re-implements just enough of it that people will 100% for sure hang themselves with it, and omits enough that people will complain about it. It's a perfect device for generating confusion. It's going to be used for no benefit, or misused harmfully, a ton, and meanwhile everyone's gonna be very confused about it. Ditto Redux—which is at least not funny in itself the way React Hooks are, though the flailing and consternation around it are—which is dead simple if you don't use the wrong words to describe things, yet how many person-hours have been lost trying to decipher what's going on there? So, so many. On the one hand it's funny, and I do legitimately enjoy all the accidental humor in React land. On the other I have to console, counsel, and train the folks who run into difficulty with this stuff, and live with or fix software in which it's been misunderstood and misused.

by kmarc 8y ago

danabramov 8y ago

I suggest you to read about algebraic effects. We don't have them in JavaScript, but conceptually that's what Hooks represent. (This is as functional as it gets.) React has always been about taking useful ideas from functional programming and bringing it to mainstream through pragmatic choices in JS. Your concern about the "globalness" is addressed in Sebastian's comment which is linked five times throughout the post — you should definitely check it out! https://github.com/reactjs/rfcs/pull/68#issuecomment-439314884 https://github.com/reactjs/rfcs/pull/68#issuecomment-4393148... Finally, don't forget you're comparing Hooks to classes. Those are hardly functional either.

asark 8y ago

It's not a global object—it's an instance of the object for the component you're using. The whole thing's a terrible OOP system in a language that already has a built-in mediocre OOP system, which terrible OOP system is, in the end, just a(n inefficient) pass-through to same built-in mediocre OOP system. The posters here wondering why you can't name them are on to something. I assume it's because then it'd be too obvious that's what they're doing, and whoever's paying people on that team (I really hope it's not more than one person, it's not hard work, but it probably is) might notice and make them stop, and maybe the React team at FB would even shrink in size, and we can't have that. I'm not sure what other explanation there could be for such comically-wasteful sandcastle building. I assume it's a combination of individual incentives to work on something not-difficult but flashy and prominent, with project incentives to never need fewer people than they currently have.

danabramov 8y ago
>The posters here wondering why you can't name them are on to something Can’t name what? Not sure I follow. >I really hope it's not more than one person, it's not hard work, but it probably is We had from 5 to 8 people on the team at different times. Maybe maintaining one of the most popular open source projects isn’t “hard work” for you but we find it challenging. >I'm not sure what other explanation there could be for such comically-wasteful sandcastle building. We try to solve problems that product engineers run into. If you have better ideas we’d love to hear them.
- asark 8y ago
  >The posters here wondering why you can't name them are on to something Imprecise phrasing on my part, the discussion here has been around naming hooks with Symbols. > We had from 5 to 8 people on the team at different times. Maybe maintaining one of the most popular open source projects isn’t “hard work” for you but we find it challenging. I meant React Hooks specifically, not Redux, which I assume is what you mean here. > We try to solve problems that product engineers run into. If you have better ideas we’d love to hear them. Use the built-in OOP system instead of writing a worse new one? Reinventing methods and properties with poor, misleading syntax as a thin layer over the OOP system of the host language is... well, it's helping bloggers, I guess.
  - danabramov 8y ago
    I’d love to hear about your solutions but maybe don’t be so quick to dismiss other people’s hard work as something to “help bloggers”. If we were chatting face to face would you also behave like this? We’re very open to good technical arguments but this isn’t one.
    - asark 8y ago
      > If we were chatting face to face would you also behave like this? Maybe? I usually very much would not, of course, but JS "culture" creates significant irritation and wasted time for me daily, and has for years, especially in React-land, since that's where the money is lately so it's hard to avoid. The only other software that gets me this exasperated is anything Poettering thinks up, but at least I don't personally have to work closely with any of that daily (any more, and for now). I'm sure I'll have to deal with hooks when people around me start using them. It's less that I'm upset that they exist than I feel like I'm being gaslighted. I've read the docs, and the source, because, again, I have to know this stuff. After the initial disbelief wore off I had a good laugh, like, actual LOL. This thread is the first of many I at that moment predicted I'd see as people who really, really in their hearts and in their actual technical needs and in the language they're using, just needed OOP, but are on the JS-must-be-functional-at-all-costs hype train, expressing frustration and confusion over this feature and burning lots of time trying to sort out how OOP works when you're trying so hard to not type "this" and pretending it's something else. It's a less-useful and confusing replacement for OO that re-implements just enough of it that people will 100% for sure hang themselves with it, and omits enough that people will complain about it. It's a perfect device for generating confusion. It's going to be used for no benefit, or misused harmfully, a ton, and meanwhile everyone's gonna be very confused about it. Ditto Redux—which is at least not funny in itself the way React Hooks are, though the flailing and consternation around it are—which is dead simple if you don't use the wrong words to describe things, yet how many person-hours have been lost trying to decipher what's going on there? So, so many. On the one hand it's funny, and I do legitimately enjoy all the accidental humor in React land. On the other I have to console, counsel, and train the folks who run into difficulty with this stuff, and live with or fix software in which it's been misunderstood and misused.