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Hooks solve the problem that state in classes is not compositional. If you have a stateful class that manages two or more bits of state, it's a lot of work to m

Hooks solve the problem that state in classes is not compositional. If you have a stateful class that manages two or more bits of state, it's a lot of work to move one bit to a different component: if not already you have to make the other component stateful, move code over there, check that all the lifecycle methods are updated etc. With hooks you can copy&paste one or two lines of code to another component and be done. I agree that the bulk of your application state should be managed centrally. But I often need small bits of state all over the place, not related to the overall app state but for UX purposes. For those cases hooks are much more pleasant to use that writing stateful classes.

jameslk 8y ago
> it's a lot of work It should be a lot of work. There should be a penalty for this. State makes your code harder to reason about and should be avoided (i.e. contained) as much as possible. > But I often need small bits of state all over the place If you need small bits of state all over the place you may need to rethink things or use a state management system. The spirit of React hooks might be to make things easier for certain edge cases but instead they will be abused by those who don't understand them to make their code harder to understand. Trust me, I've already started running into this with those who decided to cargo cult React hooks.
- littlecranky67 8y ago
  While it is true that you should not overuse state, it is almost impossible in real-world applications not to have it. I.e. a single UI toggle that shows/hides some content requires a field on the components state. Putting this in the props or even a state management container like redux would be overkill.
  - jameslk 8y ago
    I have built real world applications with React (consumer, insurance, B2B, I work at Facebook using React currently). I've handled some pretty crazy edge cases. I've never felt I needed something like hooks. The example you gave me sounds just fine for a "smart/dumb" component pattern[0]. If you need something between props and redux, there's plenty of existing options that work fine. React context and the render props pattern come to mind. 0. https://medium.com/@dan_abramov/smart-and-dumb-components-7ca2f9a7c7d0 https://medium.com/@dan_abramov/smart-and-dumb-components-7c... (The author of this blog post pushes hooks now yet the pattern works well in most cases)

jameslk 8y ago

> it's a lot of work It should be a lot of work. There should be a penalty for this. State makes your code harder to reason about and should be avoided (i.e. contained) as much as possible. > But I often need small bits of state all over the place If you need small bits of state all over the place you may need to rethink things or use a state management system. The spirit of React hooks might be to make things easier for certain edge cases but instead they will be abused by those who don't understand them to make their code harder to understand. Trust me, I've already started running into this with those who decided to cargo cult React hooks.

littlecranky67 8y ago
While it is true that you should not overuse state, it is almost impossible in real-world applications not to have it. I.e. a single UI toggle that shows/hides some content requires a field on the components state. Putting this in the props or even a state management container like redux would be overkill.
- jameslk 8y ago
  I have built real world applications with React (consumer, insurance, B2B, I work at Facebook using React currently). I've handled some pretty crazy edge cases. I've never felt I needed something like hooks. The example you gave me sounds just fine for a "smart/dumb" component pattern[0]. If you need something between props and redux, there's plenty of existing options that work fine. React context and the render props pattern come to mind. 0. https://medium.com/@dan_abramov/smart-and-dumb-components-7ca2f9a7c7d0 https://medium.com/@dan_abramov/smart-and-dumb-components-7c... (The author of this blog post pushes hooks now yet the pattern works well in most cases)