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You likely don't have the problems that Facebook is trying to resolve with React. Namely, developing something once and having it work ideally everywhere on th
by kylemh 7y ago
You likely don't have the problems that Facebook is trying to resolve with React.
Namely, developing something once and having it work ideally everywhere on the planet (slow network vs. fast network).
They're worried about shaving kilobytes here and there - concurrent mode helps to dynamically render/load items in an order that makes sense for people on slow networks where it wouldn't even matter for people on fast networks.
- onion2k 7y agoYou likely don't have the problems that Facebook is trying to resolve with React. Namely, developing something once and having it work ideally everywhere on the planet (slow network vs. fast network). Providing users with the best experience possible in their browser regardless of the limitations of their computer and network is a problem every front end developer should be trying to solve. Very few of us work at the scale of Facebook, but that particular problem isn't a scaling issue. Suggesting we can ignore the problem of a bad experience for users on slow networks just because we operate at a smaller scale is plain wrong, and anyone making web tech with that attitude is failing the people who have to use the code they write.
- kylemh 7y agoAgreed. That's why I'm really happy with concurrent mode making this complex problem a little simpler to solve.
- dnautics 7y ago> Facebook is trying to resolve with React You mean like being able to have juniors up and running and writing legible and maintainable (if at the cost of being opinionated) code?
- kylemh 7y agoAs somebody that's helped teach HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and Python to dozens of brand new developers, React seems to help juniors move faster than ever, IMO.
- democracy 7y agoAnd this is fine but why the facebook-scale problems solver becomes a mainstream library then? How many companies have these problems?
- bcrosby95 7y agoThis is how things have worked in tech for at least the last 10 years (which is when I first noticed it). People that don't have the same problems as FAANGs cargo culting FAANG tech because it works for FAANG.
- kylemh 7y agoBecause React's mental model and ecosystem makes a lot of developers happy regardless of not leveraging the more advanced aspects of both.
- andrewingram 7y agoI've seen forms of this argument (essentially "you don't have the same problems Facebook has") more-or-less since I first started using React over 5 years ago, and it's never held that much water with me. Mainly because I've only ever worked in comparatively small companies (fewer than 30 engineers) and every step of the way React has uncannily been solving the problems I've been facing (in fact, my decision to try React came at the end of months of trying alternative solutions to view layers until deciding to bite the bullet and try that weird JSX thing). For me it comes down to a simple question: Is what you're doing sufficiently app-y to justify an up front framework cost of around 70kb (React + your ecosystem libraries of choice)? If the answer is "no", there's a follow-up question of "is that likely to change within a year?" It's relatively frustrating that React is one of the largest React-like frameworks (e.g. compared to Preact and Vue), but they've mostly been focused on different problems for the last few years. I'd expect React to get smaller and faster once there's less of a focus on fundamentally changing and simplifying the way we approach certain types of problems (e.g. the ones that Suspense solves). Er this ended up being longer than expected, sorry about that!
- kylemh 7y agoNo worries! It sounds like you're saying you haven't needed to tackle this problem, but React has solved tons of other problems for you.