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Do you ever wonder whether we cause the complexity ourselves. Did we need React? Flux? Graphql? Since we introduced these concepts we needed to rethink a huge a
by erlich 6y ago
Do you ever wonder whether we cause the complexity ourselves. Did we need React? Flux? Graphql? Since we introduced these concepts we needed to rethink a huge amount of other stuff to keep it performant.
Compare the simplicity of jQuery vs a modern tool chain. Like creating a form. It gets pretty insane with React. And jQuery would be dead simple.
You have to stay on the bandwagon because it’s where the community is now. There’s certainly a lot more fun to be had remaking everything in React though.
- tashoecraft 6y agoIt’s pretty clear you haven’t worked on any modern front end site. Go and try and build any front end site demanded by most business owners in jquery. It’s not just bandwagon, it’s solving problems in the environment in which they are required with the tools that are present. It’s so incredibly naive to think the efforts of tens of thousands is all pointless if they just used this one tool.
- jakelazaroff 6y agoIf all you’re doing is submitting a form with Ajax, sure, jQuery would be fine. But I’ll venture that most frontend apps are at least somewhat more complicated than that. My side project is a web app that lets you create music visualizer videos. There’s a ton of UI, state, complex interaction between parts, etc. If I weren’t using React, I’d be using something — but it would surely be another full-on framework, not a simple library like jQuery.
- alephu5 6y agoThe main advantage of react in my opinion is the reusability of components. Most developers are not artists and can't design aesthetic and ergonomic interfaces from basic web elements, whereas with react you can install a component library (like material UI) and effectively just focus on business logic. I'm mainly a backend developer so can't comment on how this tradeoff works out when you have the resources for artistic UI/UX folks and reduced development pace.
- erlich 6y agoWe had component libraries and reusability before React. I think a lot of FE best practices evolved at the same time as React. A good example is React Native which is less about React but more about a js interop layer with Cocoa that happens to use React for the rendering.