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Ask HN: How was the web before React.js?

3 points by ofou 4y ago

gaws 4y ago
jQuery. jQuery everywhere.
emteycz 4y ago
It was so bad I don't even want to talk about it... And it was slow, too. Back then, React was a significant speedup as well as major DX improvement. (I'm speaking about web apps such as CRM or ERP)
meerita 4y ago
What do you mean by before React.js? Which year? in particular? I do a brief rant about web development from 1998 up today http://minid.net/2019/04/07/the-css-utilitarian-methodology/ http://minid.net/2019/04/07/the-css-utilitarian-methodology/. You can have an idea with that.
eimrine 4y ago
You are having a great ability to see a typical website w/o React. You can even enjoy of tables instead of divs.
- raxxorraxor 4y ago
  As someone who certainly is no web developer I made the error of using tables once. Little did I know about the rules how tables have to be rendered. Try to display something with say 100,000 html table cells. That will inhibit all but the most powerful of machines. I don't know what causes this exactly. I think it is something about table size calculations being done for every cell you add to the table. I did want to display a lot of data and with divs the rendering of the page was more or less instant.
  - eimrine 4y ago
    So your point is that 100000 td elements are slower than 100000 divs with all CSS and data mostly the same? I am also not a professional webdev but that is unbelievable. My expectation is that nothing can beat tables if rendering some table data is needed. All that table/tr/td stuff must be hardware accelerated in some way because a <tr></tr> means a table row and nothing else while <div></div> may be anything. I haven't done any researches but I hope making table using table/tr/td is like to do running using running shoes, while making table using div is like running using regular shoes - or table syntax should be deprecated ASAP.
    - raxxorraxor 4y ago
      I think there are some (historic?) rules for tables in how their width is calculated which doesn't happen with divs. Not really sure though, I am no expert as well.
  - mattmanser 4y ago
    A simple fix for that would have been to switch to table-layout:fixed. So that was your actual mistake, not knowing how to turn off the dynamic layout.
    - raxxorraxor 4y ago
      I am sure I did that. I also specified the width of any cell I knew the length of the content, which was most cells but not all of them. I also had to render the table before all data was loaded. It is probably possible to get them to render quickly, but divs just were more flexible and performed much better. I probably missed something but I could not really figure out what was causing to performance problem.
johncoltrane 4y ago
The web? Mostly the same. React is close to irrelevant at this zoom level. Front-end web development? Not much, IMO. It didn't realy bring anything revolutionary. The field started to suck way before React.
trinovantes 4y ago
Does anybody remember the time when JS template libraries like Backbone, Handlebars, Emberjs was briefly popular after jQuery but before React/JSX came around. I think this was the early 2010s.
- maxbaines 4y ago
  Yes completely remember, I still have production BackboneJs apps in use today.
speedgoose 4y ago
We had a few years of Angular with jQuery and before that it was very much only jQuery. jQuery was loved because it provided a common and good API across web browsers. Some people used backbone js but that was rare. Before jQuery, the most fancy projects used prototypejs and http://script.aculo.us/ http://script.aculo.us/ Before these, I was not doing web development so I prefer to not say anything.
- mattmanser 4y ago
  No it wasn't, after jQuery, you're completely missing out the template phase (e.g. mustache, these were often coupled with underscore) and then came the first frameworks phase (e.g. backbone). Angular 1 was part of the 2nd wave of frameworks (others I remember are knockout + durandal). I'd say React, Vue, Angular 2, etc. were really part of the third wave of front-end frameworks.
  - speedgoose 4y ago
    True I never been much into the template phase and forgot about it.
hulitu 4y ago
Better.

3 points by ofou 4y ago

gaws 4y ago

jQuery. jQuery everywhere.

It was so bad I don't even want to talk about it... And it was slow, too. Back then, React was a significant speedup as well as major DX improvement. (I'm speaking about web apps such as CRM or ERP)

meerita 4y ago

What do you mean by before React.js? Which year? in particular? I do a brief rant about web development from 1998 up today http://minid.net/2019/04/07/the-css-utilitarian-methodology/ http://minid.net/2019/04/07/the-css-utilitarian-methodology/. You can have an idea with that.

eimrine 4y ago

You are having a great ability to see a typical website w/o React. You can even enjoy of tables instead of divs.

raxxorraxor 4y ago
As someone who certainly is no web developer I made the error of using tables once. Little did I know about the rules how tables have to be rendered. Try to display something with say 100,000 html table cells. That will inhibit all but the most powerful of machines. I don't know what causes this exactly. I think it is something about table size calculations being done for every cell you add to the table. I did want to display a lot of data and with divs the rendering of the page was more or less instant.
- eimrine 4y ago
  So your point is that 100000 td elements are slower than 100000 divs with all CSS and data mostly the same? I am also not a professional webdev but that is unbelievable. My expectation is that nothing can beat tables if rendering some table data is needed. All that table/tr/td stuff must be hardware accelerated in some way because a <tr></tr> means a table row and nothing else while <div></div> may be anything. I haven't done any researches but I hope making table using table/tr/td is like to do running using running shoes, while making table using div is like running using regular shoes - or table syntax should be deprecated ASAP.
  - raxxorraxor 4y ago
    I think there are some (historic?) rules for tables in how their width is calculated which doesn't happen with divs. Not really sure though, I am no expert as well.
- mattmanser 4y ago
  A simple fix for that would have been to switch to table-layout:fixed. So that was your actual mistake, not knowing how to turn off the dynamic layout.
  - raxxorraxor 4y ago
    I am sure I did that. I also specified the width of any cell I knew the length of the content, which was most cells but not all of them. I also had to render the table before all data was loaded. It is probably possible to get them to render quickly, but divs just were more flexible and performed much better. I probably missed something but I could not really figure out what was causing to performance problem.

johncoltrane 4y ago

The web? Mostly the same. React is close to irrelevant at this zoom level. Front-end web development? Not much, IMO. It didn't realy bring anything revolutionary. The field started to suck way before React.

trinovantes 4y ago

Does anybody remember the time when JS template libraries like Backbone, Handlebars, Emberjs was briefly popular after jQuery but before React/JSX came around. I think this was the early 2010s.

maxbaines 4y ago
Yes completely remember, I still have production BackboneJs apps in use today.

speedgoose 4y ago

We had a few years of Angular with jQuery and before that it was very much only jQuery. jQuery was loved because it provided a common and good API across web browsers. Some people used backbone js but that was rare. Before jQuery, the most fancy projects used prototypejs and http://script.aculo.us/ http://script.aculo.us/ Before these, I was not doing web development so I prefer to not say anything.

mattmanser 4y ago
No it wasn't, after jQuery, you're completely missing out the template phase (e.g. mustache, these were often coupled with underscore) and then came the first frameworks phase (e.g. backbone). Angular 1 was part of the 2nd wave of frameworks (others I remember are knockout + durandal). I'd say React, Vue, Angular 2, etc. were really part of the third wave of front-end frameworks.
- speedgoose 4y ago
  True I never been much into the template phase and forgot about it.

hulitu 4y ago

Better.