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I wrote an app in GWT in 2011-12, and there was an existing sibling app also in GWT. It worked. It let me use my existing desktop app experience (Java, C#, C++

I wrote an app in GWT in 2011-12, and there was an existing sibling app also in GWT. It worked. It let me use my existing desktop app experience (Java, C#, C++) to write code that had a familiar style ( `myButton.setText("Click Me")` ), and build very desktop-style apps that ran in a browser. But after having learned JS and Backbone, and then React + Redux, it was clear this was a much better way to build apps in general. (Obviously I became biased towards React and Redux personally as shown by my involvement with those tools, but it truly was a big mental shift in how I approached writing code in the first place.)

christophilus 4y ago
React and Preact really are nice. I’ve been building native and web apps and services since y2k. Preact, combined with Typescript is probably my favorite tech yet. Though, I’ll note that I do really miss VB6 and C# Winforms for RAD.
hajile 4y ago
People forget too easily. It took MONTHS to become proficient at early-ish frameworks like GWT, Dojo, Marionette, Angular, Knockout, Ember, Enyo, etc. Getting up and running on React in a couple hours and almost completely understanding the entire API inside a couple days was incredible. The fact that the code was faster and had fewer bugs too was almost too much to believe.
- gedy 4y ago
  > It took MONTHS to become proficient at early-ish frameworks like ... Knockout Nah.. I don't know about the others but Knockout was super simple to learn and get going with. React was way harder IMHO.
  - hajile 4y ago
    Knockout was definitely easier to get started with vs other frameworks of the time, but still not easy by any stretch. It took time to master the template DSL, debugging templates would take you all across the guts of Knockout, and complex 2-way bindings could have you spending hours debugging them. Getting good performance was also very tricky. ReactJS of the time was pretty simple. https://web.archive.org/web/20131105184444/http://facebook.github.io/react/docs/getting-started.html https://web.archive.org/web/20131105184444/http://facebook.g... You could read every scrap of documentation in around an hour or so. There were only around a dozen-ish APIs to learn along with only a couple "unique" concepts like controlled inputs, refs, and JSX. Meanwhile, there was never a need to step into React code unless you believed React itself was buggy (I only came across this one time and the bug had already been reported and was being worked on). Even better, React code was usually faster than Knockout before optimizing stuff and the ways to improve performance were generally pretty obvious.
    - gedy 4y ago
      Different strokes I guess, but 2 way binding is what made Knockout really simple for my team to get their head around compared to React (back then).

christophilus 4y ago

React and Preact really are nice. I’ve been building native and web apps and services since y2k. Preact, combined with Typescript is probably my favorite tech yet. Though, I’ll note that I do really miss VB6 and C# Winforms for RAD.

hajile 4y ago

People forget too easily. It took MONTHS to become proficient at early-ish frameworks like GWT, Dojo, Marionette, Angular, Knockout, Ember, Enyo, etc. Getting up and running on React in a couple hours and almost completely understanding the entire API inside a couple days was incredible. The fact that the code was faster and had fewer bugs too was almost too much to believe.

gedy 4y ago
> It took MONTHS to become proficient at early-ish frameworks like ... Knockout Nah.. I don't know about the others but Knockout was super simple to learn and get going with. React was way harder IMHO.
- hajile 4y ago
  Knockout was definitely easier to get started with vs other frameworks of the time, but still not easy by any stretch. It took time to master the template DSL, debugging templates would take you all across the guts of Knockout, and complex 2-way bindings could have you spending hours debugging them. Getting good performance was also very tricky. ReactJS of the time was pretty simple. https://web.archive.org/web/20131105184444/http://facebook.github.io/react/docs/getting-started.html https://web.archive.org/web/20131105184444/http://facebook.g... You could read every scrap of documentation in around an hour or so. There were only around a dozen-ish APIs to learn along with only a couple "unique" concepts like controlled inputs, refs, and JSX. Meanwhile, there was never a need to step into React code unless you believed React itself was buggy (I only came across this one time and the bug had already been reported and was being worked on). Even better, React code was usually faster than Knockout before optimizing stuff and the ways to improve performance were generally pretty obvious.
  - gedy 4y ago
    Different strokes I guess, but 2 way binding is what made Knockout really simple for my team to get their head around compared to React (back then).