5 ms·

Big +1. I would be really interested to find one, only ONE, website where React/Angular was really bringing a better experience and better final product than a

Big +1. I would be really interested to find one, only ONE, website where React/Angular was really bringing a better experience and better final product than a standard pure JS with simple Ajax system.

freedomben 6y ago
better experience for who? For the developer it's a way better experience. For the consumer it often isn't because of inefficient bloat, but if effort is put into packaging it sensibly it can be better thanks to build pipelines/optimizations. In my experience, there's a lot of apps that would have never gotten written in the first place without the boost from React/Angular/etc. It simply takes way longer (which means also more expensive) to use "pure javascript and ajax."
- munchbunny 6y ago
  I've been doing FE development on and off since IE5/6, starting out with pure JS and Ajax, and in my opinion the modern FE developer experience using the major frameworks is a generational improvement over the messes we used to write. There are still frustrations, but it's a lot better than it used to be. Browser API's and CSS have all improved drastically since then, so pure JS and Ajax isn't as bad. I still avoid frameworks for small things just to keep pages lightweight. But for heavyweight projects, if you don't use an established framework, you just end up with a shitty home-grown framework anyway, because the alternative, teams of developers working on the same site with no frameworks, is even worse.
  - freedomben 6y ago
    Agree completely. I'm amazed at how good pure JS is these days. I only use React when I have a non-trivial UI that I need to write. It's just not worth it for simple stuff. That said I don't do a ton of FE work these days, so my opinion is less relevant.
- OkGoDoIt 6y ago
  For a certain kind of developer who drinks a certain kind of Kool-Aid, sure. Personally I am a lot less productive when I’m forced to work on a React codebase. It’s kind of like using an ORM, it can feel like it makes things easier, but really you end up fighting with the abstraction more than if you had just learned the underlying technology itself.
  - jdavis703 6y ago
    The thing is, every place I've worked that was against ORMs or frontend frameworks wound up evolving their own half-documented, half working framework. I find it's easier to spend as much time learning the abstraction as the underlying technology, and then that knowledge can be ported from system to system.
    - freedomben 6y ago
      My experience too. The whole "we don't use a framework" sounds great but it always turns in to some sort of home grown framework that is poorly documented, has bugs, and isn't open source so you can't take it with you when you leave.
      - rhizome 6y ago
        Related: "I don't watch or even own a TV" [watches Netflix/YouTube on a laptop six hours a day]
      - akamia 6y ago
        You also miss out on the community aspect of things. Working with a framework like React means that there is a worldwide community of developers that you can tap into when you run into a roadblock. It is incredibly frustrating to run into an issue with a home grown framework and have to ask around only to discover that the person who wrote the part you're having trouble with left the company 2 years ago and no one else understands it.
Kaze404 6y ago
What makes you think React/Angular are products to increase user experience? Of course you won't find that, they are tools for developers to streamline development and make maintenance easier. Have you worked on a platform that uses nothing but pure JS and fetch calls? I have, and there's no way to make sense of a project that has to deal with so many things.
- revscat 6y ago
  https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=F5hA79vKE_E https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=F5hA79vKE_E
  - BoumTAC 6y ago
    why is it downvote ? This link just show you can create a basic twitter like application in 10 minutes with the right tool. Imagine how many hours/days it would take with any JavaScript framework !
    - Kaze404 6y ago
      Probably because a Twitter close isn't even close to a complex application. You can build one in React/Vue just as fast as you would without them.
      - tambourine_man 6y ago
        Yeah, it's a common trope. Everyone can create a Twitter/Facebook/Instagram clone in a week or so of intense work. But that's not actually the hard part. What's hard is getting millions of users in the first place and scaling to that magnitude. In that order.
- tambourine_man 6y ago
  >they are tools for developers to streamline development and make maintenance easier. I'm not convinced they are successful at that either.
- 6y ago
JoshuaDavid 6y ago
I've used react for internal administrative tools for configuring UI, and the ability to do a real-time preview of what the UI will look like based on how you've configured it is pretty useful. Also used it a number of times to build form inputs that aren't natively supported ("list of objects all with the same properties where you can select and make a change to a bunch at once" sort of thing). Basically I've found that if you're doing something useful which could be done with jquery but would probably have had subtle bugs due to a combinatorial explosion of possible states, you can usually use react in that context to make a cleaner, faster, and less buggy version of that same UI that is faster to develop and easier to reason about (and thus better for the end user, since software that works consistently is more valuable than software that mostly works as long as you don't breathe wrong near it). If you're looking for examples where a single-page app is better than server-side-rendered HTML with some javascript sprinkled in to make certain components more interactive, though, I can't help you. The successful use cases I've seen for react are of the "use it as the way you sprinkle additional functionality into your server-side-rendered HTML" type.
__s 6y ago
I updated openEtG to use React instead of PixiJS. https://etg.dek.im https://etg.dek.im https://github.com/serprex/openEtG https://github.com/serprex/openEtG Fixed some UI bugs, made it straight forward implement features like better animations & replays, performance improved by removing stuff like a constant timer for UI & having a global mousemove handler tracking mouse coordinates
aerovistae 6y ago
It sounds to me like you may have never worked in a codebase with thousands of JS files. On a major application, organizing code in vanilla JS is all but impossible. I agree it's better for a very small case, and I agree react slows things down, but that's a worthy trade-off for having organized, legible code.
ummonk 6y ago
Come on man, real programmers use assembly and roll their own browsers.
- brlewis 6y ago
  Assembly is a needless abstraction. Real programmers create binaries with xxd.
  - krapp 6y ago
    Real programmers use a magnetized needle and a steady hand.
taurath 6y ago
I can't help but feel like the people that feel this way are people that don't build maintain and modify customer focused web products for a living.
tiborsaas 6y ago
These are parallel things. Frontend frameworks let you build more predictable and solid apps than vanilla JS. Indirectly it leads to better UX since the developers can spend more time on UI tweaking, than doing it vanilla.
komali2 6y ago
What simple Ajax system?
rhizome 6y ago
Well, one primary benefit seems to be to make loading indicators/spinners into first-class components.

freedomben 6y ago

better experience for who? For the developer it's a way better experience. For the consumer it often isn't because of inefficient bloat, but if effort is put into packaging it sensibly it can be better thanks to build pipelines/optimizations. In my experience, there's a lot of apps that would have never gotten written in the first place without the boost from React/Angular/etc. It simply takes way longer (which means also more expensive) to use "pure javascript and ajax."

munchbunny 6y ago
I've been doing FE development on and off since IE5/6, starting out with pure JS and Ajax, and in my opinion the modern FE developer experience using the major frameworks is a generational improvement over the messes we used to write. There are still frustrations, but it's a lot better than it used to be. Browser API's and CSS have all improved drastically since then, so pure JS and Ajax isn't as bad. I still avoid frameworks for small things just to keep pages lightweight. But for heavyweight projects, if you don't use an established framework, you just end up with a shitty home-grown framework anyway, because the alternative, teams of developers working on the same site with no frameworks, is even worse.
- freedomben 6y ago
  Agree completely. I'm amazed at how good pure JS is these days. I only use React when I have a non-trivial UI that I need to write. It's just not worth it for simple stuff. That said I don't do a ton of FE work these days, so my opinion is less relevant.
OkGoDoIt 6y ago
For a certain kind of developer who drinks a certain kind of Kool-Aid, sure. Personally I am a lot less productive when I’m forced to work on a React codebase. It’s kind of like using an ORM, it can feel like it makes things easier, but really you end up fighting with the abstraction more than if you had just learned the underlying technology itself.
- jdavis703 6y ago
  The thing is, every place I've worked that was against ORMs or frontend frameworks wound up evolving their own half-documented, half working framework. I find it's easier to spend as much time learning the abstraction as the underlying technology, and then that knowledge can be ported from system to system.
  - freedomben 6y ago
    My experience too. The whole "we don't use a framework" sounds great but it always turns in to some sort of home grown framework that is poorly documented, has bugs, and isn't open source so you can't take it with you when you leave.
    - rhizome 6y ago
      Related: "I don't watch or even own a TV" [watches Netflix/YouTube on a laptop six hours a day]
    - akamia 6y ago
      You also miss out on the community aspect of things. Working with a framework like React means that there is a worldwide community of developers that you can tap into when you run into a roadblock. It is incredibly frustrating to run into an issue with a home grown framework and have to ask around only to discover that the person who wrote the part you're having trouble with left the company 2 years ago and no one else understands it.

Kaze404 6y ago

What makes you think React/Angular are products to increase user experience? Of course you won't find that, they are tools for developers to streamline development and make maintenance easier. Have you worked on a platform that uses nothing but pure JS and fetch calls? I have, and there's no way to make sense of a project that has to deal with so many things.

revscat 6y ago
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=F5hA79vKE_E https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=F5hA79vKE_E
- BoumTAC 6y ago
  why is it downvote ? This link just show you can create a basic twitter like application in 10 minutes with the right tool. Imagine how many hours/days it would take with any JavaScript framework !
  - Kaze404 6y ago
    Probably because a Twitter close isn't even close to a complex application. You can build one in React/Vue just as fast as you would without them.
    - tambourine_man 6y ago
      Yeah, it's a common trope. Everyone can create a Twitter/Facebook/Instagram clone in a week or so of intense work. But that's not actually the hard part. What's hard is getting millions of users in the first place and scaling to that magnitude. In that order.
tambourine_man 6y ago
>they are tools for developers to streamline development and make maintenance easier. I'm not convinced they are successful at that either.
6y ago

JoshuaDavid 6y ago

I've used react for internal administrative tools for configuring UI, and the ability to do a real-time preview of what the UI will look like based on how you've configured it is pretty useful. Also used it a number of times to build form inputs that aren't natively supported ("list of objects all with the same properties where you can select and make a change to a bunch at once" sort of thing). Basically I've found that if you're doing something useful which could be done with jquery but would probably have had subtle bugs due to a combinatorial explosion of possible states, you can usually use react in that context to make a cleaner, faster, and less buggy version of that same UI that is faster to develop and easier to reason about (and thus better for the end user, since software that works consistently is more valuable than software that mostly works as long as you don't breathe wrong near it). If you're looking for examples where a single-page app is better than server-side-rendered HTML with some javascript sprinkled in to make certain components more interactive, though, I can't help you. The successful use cases I've seen for react are of the "use it as the way you sprinkle additional functionality into your server-side-rendered HTML" type.

__s 6y ago

I updated openEtG to use React instead of PixiJS. https://etg.dek.im https://etg.dek.im https://github.com/serprex/openEtG https://github.com/serprex/openEtG Fixed some UI bugs, made it straight forward implement features like better animations & replays, performance improved by removing stuff like a constant timer for UI & having a global mousemove handler tracking mouse coordinates

aerovistae 6y ago

It sounds to me like you may have never worked in a codebase with thousands of JS files. On a major application, organizing code in vanilla JS is all but impossible. I agree it's better for a very small case, and I agree react slows things down, but that's a worthy trade-off for having organized, legible code.

ummonk 6y ago

Come on man, real programmers use assembly and roll their own browsers.

brlewis 6y ago
Assembly is a needless abstraction. Real programmers create binaries with xxd.
- krapp 6y ago
  Real programmers use a magnetized needle and a steady hand.

taurath 6y ago

I can't help but feel like the people that feel this way are people that don't build maintain and modify customer focused web products for a living.

tiborsaas 6y ago

These are parallel things. Frontend frameworks let you build more predictable and solid apps than vanilla JS. Indirectly it leads to better UX since the developers can spend more time on UI tweaking, than doing it vanilla.

komali2 6y ago

What simple Ajax system?

rhizome 6y ago

Well, one primary benefit seems to be to make loading indicators/spinners into first-class components.