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Sorry but what complexity are you talking about? React (particularly in the early days) has always had a comparatively small API surface. You have components w

Sorry but what complexity are you talking about? React (particularly in the early days) has always had a comparatively small API surface. You have components with a render method, and in that render method you return other components which you can pass data to via "props" - that's basically react in a nutshell. I've noticed React is often conflated with the wider ecosystem it is a part of (Webpack, Redux, Babel) - perhaps this is the complexity you are referring to, but to be clear React can be used without any of these things. And sure React being developed by Facebook couldn't have hurt in terms of it gaining popularity - but the real reason it took off is that in contrast to what you said it removed a huge amount of complexity by alleviating the burden of developers having to manipulate the DOM directly in ad hoc ways. Instead of having to manually add classes, add elements, remove elements, append children, you could just say given this piece of state, give me this. > Anything that comes out of Facebook is just pure manipulation. This just shows that your issue lies with facebook the company, which is biasing you against react - the technology.

cannedslime 7y ago
Sure you could use react without JSX compilation, State libraries etc. But you'd just end up writing more code to do less. If your app isn't complex enough to merit the use of webpack, redux, babel etc etc. it probably isn't complex enough to even worry about DOM performance.
jondubois 7y ago
>> I've noticed React is often conflated with the wider ecosystem it is a part of (Webpack, Redux, Babel) - perhaps this is the complexity you are referring to, but to be clear React can be used without any of these things. I disagree with this. Everyone claims that you can use React without JSX but no one does it. Aside from ugliness, the main reason why no ones does this is because you would be missing the most useful aspect of React which is compatibility and consistency with the rest of the React ecosystem. So you cannot separate React from its ecosystem. All this complexity has become tightly intertwined. If you use VueJS without a bundler (which is actually feasible), you will be surprised how much simpler and elegant the whole development experience is. Once HTTP servers start supporting static push of scripts, we will not even need bundling in production.
- mellab2 7y ago
  >> the main reason why no ones does this is because you would be missing the most useful aspect of React which is compatibility and consistency with the rest of the React ecosystem. So you cannot separate React from its ecosystem. All this complexity has become tightly intertwined. This is just plain wrong. Firstly using JSX or not will have 0 impact on compatibility with other libraries in the ecosystem because they are not coded against JSX they are coded against what JSX is compiled down to. The main reason people use JSX is because people like it. Also you say the complexity has become intertwined but I don't hear any examples of how that is the case?

cannedslime 7y ago

Sure you could use react without JSX compilation, State libraries etc. But you'd just end up writing more code to do less. If your app isn't complex enough to merit the use of webpack, redux, babel etc etc. it probably isn't complex enough to even worry about DOM performance.

jondubois 7y ago

>> I've noticed React is often conflated with the wider ecosystem it is a part of (Webpack, Redux, Babel) - perhaps this is the complexity you are referring to, but to be clear React can be used without any of these things. I disagree with this. Everyone claims that you can use React without JSX but no one does it. Aside from ugliness, the main reason why no ones does this is because you would be missing the most useful aspect of React which is compatibility and consistency with the rest of the React ecosystem. So you cannot separate React from its ecosystem. All this complexity has become tightly intertwined. If you use VueJS without a bundler (which is actually feasible), you will be surprised how much simpler and elegant the whole development experience is. Once HTTP servers start supporting static push of scripts, we will not even need bundling in production.

mellab2 7y ago
>> the main reason why no ones does this is because you would be missing the most useful aspect of React which is compatibility and consistency with the rest of the React ecosystem. So you cannot separate React from its ecosystem. All this complexity has become tightly intertwined. This is just plain wrong. Firstly using JSX or not will have 0 impact on compatibility with other libraries in the ecosystem because they are not coded against JSX they are coded against what JSX is compiled down to. The main reason people use JSX is because people like it. Also you say the complexity has become intertwined but I don't hear any examples of how that is the case?