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React I have been thinking about, having worked with it a lot and also recently done a React / TS / GraphQL (GraphQL may have been the poorest choice I made; ti

React I have been thinking about, having worked with it a lot and also recently done a React / TS / GraphQL (GraphQL may have been the poorest choice I made; time will tell) project. I think React itself is awesome and I've always enjoyed it. While I'm not an expert, it's conceptual foundations and core abstractions felt right, and I do think it makes lots of frontend tasks simpler, especially for non-small projects. At the same time the frontend ecosystem is a mess, as we all know, and as my CSS skills advance I see more just how much could be done with HTML / CSS / limited use of JS and your classic REST app, that's not a single-page app, and how much complexity might be able to be avoided and thus time saved. At the same time, I don't think it's just "trendiness" that has caused the growth of React and SPA's. I think they give us various wins that we probably take for granted because we're now used to them. So, the short answer to my long ramble is, I don't know. But I do think React itself, specifically, hit a sweet spot in terms of being a powerful yet understandable tool, and still remaining a tool, as opposed to a framework.

davedx 6y ago
Full agreement with you on those technologies. GraphQL is unfortunately still part of a low grade hype cycle where more and more companies are using it because "it's the next REST". But if you don't have a real need for the advantages it offers (for example a mobile app whose client side requests you can't easily change in sync with your API, or a data model that really is graph-like), it can be more cost than benefit. React on the other hand: I've lost count of the number of small prototypes I've started in vanilla JS, thinking "this time I can just roll it myself", then ended up pulling in React. Even the simplest things are easier and simpler with it, and hugely complex applications are also easier and simpler with it. It has a fantastic API surface.
- adamsea 6y ago
  Exactly - that's my take on React.
what-the-grump 6y ago
I have that rant daily at this point. Dev A: I need an API to CRUD Me: But we've been doing CRUD for 30 years without an API this is a small project Dev A: But I don't know how, its not best practice, my team lead agrees, here is a medium article, get with the times, etc. Me: Ok so you don't know how to do your job. Dev B: Here, put the React SPA in a Docker container and run it on some cloud its easy... Me: But all I need is still CRUD, I dont need to scale it, I dont care if its isolated, it should have been 100 lines of code Dev B: its not best practice, my team lead agrees, here is a medium article, get with the times, Docker run everywhere, etc. Me: But what I need to connect it to internal resources and use DNS? Dev B: load balancer! If only you have an AKS cluster! Me: We work in a 25 person company that needs some very basic CRUD. It will never scale past one deployment, ever, if it does, dont worry we will pay someone to do it right because we will be swimming in money. The problem is that people are starting to not know how to do simple things. So you get grumpy admins losing their marbles over the complexity of this BS. Most of the time things could be fixed faster, easier, deployed and managed easier using simple technologies that have been around for 20+ years. But lets wack it with the Python, Docker, React, NoSQL, GraphDB, K8S hammer because...? Not only that, the juniors don't know multiple technologies anymore they just know X. So sysadmins complain that devops is pushing more roles on them, while I have developers that have written full Node.js sites and dont know that IP or a Port, or TCP, UDP, is... So basically, same shtick different decade.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- Animats 6y ago
  I made that comment once about "Soylent". (Remember Soylent? The nutritional drink?) That company made a big deal about their "tech stack". Not for manufacturing or quality control, but for ordinary web processing. Their order volume was so low that a CGI program on a low-end shared hosting system could do the job. But they were going to "scale", right? Amusingly, they eventually did "scale". They started selling through WalMart in bulk, and accepted their fate as yet another nutritional drink, on the shelves alongside Ensure Plus and Muscle Milk. Their "tech stack" was irrelevant to that.

davedx 6y ago

Full agreement with you on those technologies. GraphQL is unfortunately still part of a low grade hype cycle where more and more companies are using it because "it's the next REST". But if you don't have a real need for the advantages it offers (for example a mobile app whose client side requests you can't easily change in sync with your API, or a data model that really is graph-like), it can be more cost than benefit. React on the other hand: I've lost count of the number of small prototypes I've started in vanilla JS, thinking "this time I can just roll it myself", then ended up pulling in React. Even the simplest things are easier and simpler with it, and hugely complex applications are also easier and simpler with it. It has a fantastic API surface.

adamsea 6y ago
Exactly - that's my take on React.

what-the-grump 6y ago

I have that rant daily at this point. Dev A: I need an API to CRUD Me: But we've been doing CRUD for 30 years without an API this is a small project Dev A: But I don't know how, its not best practice, my team lead agrees, here is a medium article, get with the times, etc. Me: Ok so you don't know how to do your job. Dev B: Here, put the React SPA in a Docker container and run it on some cloud its easy... Me: But all I need is still CRUD, I dont need to scale it, I dont care if its isolated, it should have been 100 lines of code Dev B: its not best practice, my team lead agrees, here is a medium article, get with the times, Docker run everywhere, etc. Me: But what I need to connect it to internal resources and use DNS? Dev B: load balancer! If only you have an AKS cluster! Me: We work in a 25 person company that needs some very basic CRUD. It will never scale past one deployment, ever, if it does, dont worry we will pay someone to do it right because we will be swimming in money. The problem is that people are starting to not know how to do simple things. So you get grumpy admins losing their marbles over the complexity of this BS. Most of the time things could be fixed faster, easier, deployed and managed easier using simple technologies that have been around for 20+ years. But lets wack it with the Python, Docker, React, NoSQL, GraphDB, K8S hammer because...? Not only that, the juniors don't know multiple technologies anymore they just know X. So sysadmins complain that devops is pushing more roles on them, while I have developers that have written full Node.js sites and dont know that IP or a Port, or TCP, UDP, is... So basically, same shtick different decade.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
Animats 6y ago
I made that comment once about "Soylent". (Remember Soylent? The nutritional drink?) That company made a big deal about their "tech stack". Not for manufacturing or quality control, but for ordinary web processing. Their order volume was so low that a CGI program on a low-end shared hosting system could do the job. But they were going to "scale", right? Amusingly, they eventually did "scale". They started selling through WalMart in bulk, and accepted their fate as yet another nutritional drink, on the shelves alongside Ensure Plus and Muscle Milk. Their "tech stack" was irrelevant to that.