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I write a lot of enterprise apps and I’ve seen many many frameworks come and go over the years. I personally am not impressed with React and don’t get what all

by jarym 7y ago

I write a lot of enterprise apps and I’ve seen many many frameworks come and go over the years. I personally am not impressed with React and don’t get what all the fuss is about. We’ve had Angular, jQuery and a whole bunch of stuff over the years and each one managed to become a ‘a thing’ for a while

koonsolo 7y ago
React introduced a whole new way of writing GUI's. I come from a game development background, and there we had Immediate GUI's for some time now (https://eliasdaler.wordpress.com/2016/05/31/imgui-sfml-tutorial-part-1/ https://eliasdaler.wordpress.com/2016/05/31/imgui-sfml-tutor...). React basically translates this concept to the web, and does some optimizations to not rebuild the entire DOM from scratch, and only rebuild when state changes and not every frame. Writing a 'render function' is simpler and easier than building a structure of widgets and letting them handle events. (I like simple and easy) Anyway, it seems both react and flutter are also gaining on the mobile apps developments, and web developers are very happy using React. Of course frameworks come and go, but React introduced a shift of mind when programming GUI's.
- buboard 7y ago
  > React introduced a whole new way What will happen to this way when React is "outroduced" ?
  - koonsolo 7y ago
    Flutter uses the same concept, and it probably won't be the last. But who knows, things go really fast in the web world.
- jarym 7y ago
  React introduced this concept ‘to you’ perhaps but it wasn’t the first. The framework I used has been doing this in the very early 2000s. Don’t get me wrong it has a lot to like about it - but the only revolution is that Facebook’s might propelled this in the minds of developers all over.
  - hombre_fatal 7y ago
    Just curious, which framework are you referring to? Every time I see someone claim such a thing, it's usually only distantly related. Like it too has a render() function. I mean, you can find old FRP phd/whitepapers but I don't think they prohibit you from ever saying "$X introduced $concept" without a disclaimer that it wasn't the first. So if you're going to insist, then why not share some prior art for the discussion?
    - koonsolo 7y ago
      I started my career in 2002 (been programming since '93), and back then there was no client side rendering. So my guess is, he's talking about server side rendering that spits out html. Since those things really miss the 'react' part of React, it is still quite different.
      - jarym 7y ago
        I used SmartClient when it was launched in 2002 and that did client-side rendering back then: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SmartClient https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SmartClient - I've recently taken the JS version (not GWT) and ported it to a set of ES6 classes and modules. I used to work for a portal vendor called Plumtree in 2004 (later acquired by BEA and then Oracle) and much of their stuff did client-side rendering. The idea of making web interfaces more declarative and less tied to DOM manipulation has been evolving since then. Many developers I'd encounter back in those days moaned that we were not using jQuery or MooTools or whatever. React is very nice - don't get me wrong - but its popularity has much to do with the mindset of developers shifting away from seeing JavaScript as a way of 'adding spruce' to 'web pages'.
        koonsolo 7y ago
        The revolutionary part of React is not client side rendering, it's the composition (and reaction) of GUI through state changes. A quick look at SmartClient shows that it still uses the old OO way of widget composition (widgets having .show() and .hide() methods, etc). This is not at all how React works. In react you render your GUI based on state, and events never manipulate widgets, they manipulate state. It's a functional way of approaching GUI's instead of an Object Oriented way. The React way of building GUI's is now used outside of the web, for mobile apps through React Native and Flutter. This is completely different that any pre-existing GUI frameworks.
kumarvvr 7y ago
The mental model for a react component is very much simplified and consistent. You declare how your view looks like, wire up the state and user interaction stuff and you have a self contained puece of code. People doing UI stuff, before the advent of React usually highly appreciate it because they know how much work it takes to actually build a usable UI in vanilla JS.
- jarym 7y ago
  React introduced this concept into the mainstream but it wasn’t at all new.

by jarym 7y ago

koonsolo 7y ago

React introduced a whole new way of writing GUI's. I come from a game development background, and there we had Immediate GUI's for some time now (https://eliasdaler.wordpress.com/2016/05/31/imgui-sfml-tutorial-part-1/ https://eliasdaler.wordpress.com/2016/05/31/imgui-sfml-tutor...). React basically translates this concept to the web, and does some optimizations to not rebuild the entire DOM from scratch, and only rebuild when state changes and not every frame. Writing a 'render function' is simpler and easier than building a structure of widgets and letting them handle events. (I like simple and easy) Anyway, it seems both react and flutter are also gaining on the mobile apps developments, and web developers are very happy using React. Of course frameworks come and go, but React introduced a shift of mind when programming GUI's.

buboard 7y ago
> React introduced a whole new way What will happen to this way when React is "outroduced" ?
- koonsolo 7y ago
  Flutter uses the same concept, and it probably won't be the last. But who knows, things go really fast in the web world.
jarym 7y ago
React introduced this concept ‘to you’ perhaps but it wasn’t the first. The framework I used has been doing this in the very early 2000s. Don’t get me wrong it has a lot to like about it - but the only revolution is that Facebook’s might propelled this in the minds of developers all over.
- hombre_fatal 7y ago
  Just curious, which framework are you referring to? Every time I see someone claim such a thing, it's usually only distantly related. Like it too has a render() function. I mean, you can find old FRP phd/whitepapers but I don't think they prohibit you from ever saying "$X introduced $concept" without a disclaimer that it wasn't the first. So if you're going to insist, then why not share some prior art for the discussion?
  - koonsolo 7y ago
    I started my career in 2002 (been programming since '93), and back then there was no client side rendering. So my guess is, he's talking about server side rendering that spits out html. Since those things really miss the 'react' part of React, it is still quite different.
    - jarym 7y ago
      I used SmartClient when it was launched in 2002 and that did client-side rendering back then: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SmartClient https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SmartClient - I've recently taken the JS version (not GWT) and ported it to a set of ES6 classes and modules. I used to work for a portal vendor called Plumtree in 2004 (later acquired by BEA and then Oracle) and much of their stuff did client-side rendering. The idea of making web interfaces more declarative and less tied to DOM manipulation has been evolving since then. Many developers I'd encounter back in those days moaned that we were not using jQuery or MooTools or whatever. React is very nice - don't get me wrong - but its popularity has much to do with the mindset of developers shifting away from seeing JavaScript as a way of 'adding spruce' to 'web pages'.
      - koonsolo 7y ago
        The revolutionary part of React is not client side rendering, it's the composition (and reaction) of GUI through state changes. A quick look at SmartClient shows that it still uses the old OO way of widget composition (widgets having .show() and .hide() methods, etc). This is not at all how React works. In react you render your GUI based on state, and events never manipulate widgets, they manipulate state. It's a functional way of approaching GUI's instead of an Object Oriented way. The React way of building GUI's is now used outside of the web, for mobile apps through React Native and Flutter. This is completely different that any pre-existing GUI frameworks.

kumarvvr 7y ago

The mental model for a react component is very much simplified and consistent. You declare how your view looks like, wire up the state and user interaction stuff and you have a self contained puece of code. People doing UI stuff, before the advent of React usually highly appreciate it because they know how much work it takes to actually build a usable UI in vanilla JS.

jarym 7y ago
React introduced this concept into the mainstream but it wasn’t at all new.