5 ms·

Of course, another example of how React is the software engineering paradigm shift of this decade. Comparable to last decade's shift from desktop to web apps.

by Liron 7y ago

Of course, another example of how React is the software engineering paradigm shift of this decade. Comparable to last decade's shift from desktop to web apps. Interesting that React is fundamentally an invention at the level of programming language design, an insight about how to best express UI behavior. This means we could have had it (or any mainstream functional reactive programming) much earlier or later than we did. It came on the scene at an arbitrary unpredictable time.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
jabbernotty 7y ago
I find it amazing how many different software development frameworks are out there. After all these years I still haven't bothered to look up what React is, and I probably will never need to. I will probably never get to maintain a codebase that uses it. So if being 'up-to-date' isn't something I will go for, how do I measure myself as a developer? I think I will go for something like 'having made a lot more regular people happy than I have frustrated'.
- revskill 7y ago
  You should try and use React first before deciding if it's actually helpful for you later. In case of React, to me, i no longer bother with syncing state with html, something like `node.innerHTML = `${my_state}` It's actually beneficial to me.
  - skohan 7y ago
    Yeah I spent some time with raw javascript, jQuery and angular, but React is the first web framework which actually feels like a decent solution to the problem of how to build interactive web applications, rather than just being another hack.
  - pferde 7y ago
    That sounds like something horrible that one never should have needed to bother with in the first place. Like saying that with this new car, I no longer bother checking whether the wheels aren't about to fall off. :)
- qwerty1234599 7y ago
  Probably around half of frontend developer jobs I see nowadays are for projects using react; and that number keeps going up. If you do any web development at all, chances are you will have to work in a React codebase during the next decade
  - pjmlp 7y ago
    Not when one works at an agency that happens to bet on other stacks.
- jabbernotty 7y ago
  I don't understand why this is being downvoted. There is no negativity in the message.
jillesvangurp 7y ago
I don't know. It reads to me like they are rediscovering what e.g. Visual Basic and Delphi did in the nineties: UI component libraries. Particularly VB used to have a pretty lively component ecosystem. Also, the web is littered with attempts to have reusable javascript components for things like menus, combo boxes, and other cruft people end up wanting in their web sites. This article reads a bit like a blast from the past in that sense. I think if I dig a little I might be able to dig out some papers from the sixties and seventies advertising the virtues of functions, modules, and even components with very similar language as in this article. There is some progress here of course. Internalizing CSS is a good thing. Having that as a separate thing to manage and align is just too painful to keep in a maintainable state. I think some people are still disagreeing with this but I've seen some examples of css increasingly being driven from javascript instead of shipping as a separately loaded and created artifact. Web components sort of formalize this in html/javascript and allow you to isolate components from each other, which is another good thing. Separation of concerns and isolation are good things. Also good is the shift to typescript, a language with a bit stricter semantics than javascript and of course better typing. The article does not mention this but given the speed and confidence with which they did this, I suspect they'd be pretty happy Typescript users. Other than that, I think React is mostly a variation of the same kinds of design patterns that have dominated UI development for the past decades. I did some Swing development in the nineties and I still think that was a pretty nice framework to deal with relative to the current madness that is modern web development. The web can still learn a few new tricks. I have good hopes for WASM bringing some more choice and options to the scene.
- pjmlp 7y ago
  I believe that once WASM matures a little bit more we will get that tooling back, alongside Flash's revenge.
  - jillesvangurp 7y ago
    Sure, you can use it for good and for evil. I expect this as well. Sadly, there seem to be a few annoying limitations that browser makers seem to be stuck on for the immediate future (e.g. garbage collection, simd, threads, and a few other things). Still, wasm is good enough for pretty sophisticated stuff. I was playing a version of doom 3 ported to wasm a few days ago; with decent frames per second even and quite playable: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18817278 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18817278

by Liron 7y ago

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

jabbernotty 7y ago

I find it amazing how many different software development frameworks are out there. After all these years I still haven't bothered to look up what React is, and I probably will never need to. I will probably never get to maintain a codebase that uses it. So if being 'up-to-date' isn't something I will go for, how do I measure myself as a developer? I think I will go for something like 'having made a lot more regular people happy than I have frustrated'.

revskill 7y ago
You should try and use React first before deciding if it's actually helpful for you later. In case of React, to me, i no longer bother with syncing state with html, something like `node.innerHTML = `${my_state}` It's actually beneficial to me.
- skohan 7y ago
  Yeah I spent some time with raw javascript, jQuery and angular, but React is the first web framework which actually feels like a decent solution to the problem of how to build interactive web applications, rather than just being another hack.
- pferde 7y ago
  That sounds like something horrible that one never should have needed to bother with in the first place. Like saying that with this new car, I no longer bother checking whether the wheels aren't about to fall off. :)
qwerty1234599 7y ago
Probably around half of frontend developer jobs I see nowadays are for projects using react; and that number keeps going up. If you do any web development at all, chances are you will have to work in a React codebase during the next decade
- pjmlp 7y ago
  Not when one works at an agency that happens to bet on other stacks.
jabbernotty 7y ago
I don't understand why this is being downvoted. There is no negativity in the message.

jillesvangurp 7y ago

I don't know. It reads to me like they are rediscovering what e.g. Visual Basic and Delphi did in the nineties: UI component libraries. Particularly VB used to have a pretty lively component ecosystem. Also, the web is littered with attempts to have reusable javascript components for things like menus, combo boxes, and other cruft people end up wanting in their web sites. This article reads a bit like a blast from the past in that sense. I think if I dig a little I might be able to dig out some papers from the sixties and seventies advertising the virtues of functions, modules, and even components with very similar language as in this article. There is some progress here of course. Internalizing CSS is a good thing. Having that as a separate thing to manage and align is just too painful to keep in a maintainable state. I think some people are still disagreeing with this but I've seen some examples of css increasingly being driven from javascript instead of shipping as a separately loaded and created artifact. Web components sort of formalize this in html/javascript and allow you to isolate components from each other, which is another good thing. Separation of concerns and isolation are good things. Also good is the shift to typescript, a language with a bit stricter semantics than javascript and of course better typing. The article does not mention this but given the speed and confidence with which they did this, I suspect they'd be pretty happy Typescript users. Other than that, I think React is mostly a variation of the same kinds of design patterns that have dominated UI development for the past decades. I did some Swing development in the nineties and I still think that was a pretty nice framework to deal with relative to the current madness that is modern web development. The web can still learn a few new tricks. I have good hopes for WASM bringing some more choice and options to the scene.

pjmlp 7y ago
I believe that once WASM matures a little bit more we will get that tooling back, alongside Flash's revenge.
- jillesvangurp 7y ago
  Sure, you can use it for good and for evil. I expect this as well. Sadly, there seem to be a few annoying limitations that browser makers seem to be stuck on for the immediate future (e.g. garbage collection, simd, threads, and a few other things). Still, wasm is good enough for pretty sophisticated stuff. I was playing a version of doom 3 ported to wasm a few days ago; with decent frames per second even and quite playable: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18817278 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18817278