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Webpack has been the de facto build system for react since 2017 Competing state libraries is to be expected but picking redux or mobx has let you use the same

by nawgz 4y ago

Webpack has been the de facto build system for react since 2017 Competing state libraries is to be expected but picking redux or mobx has let you use the same ones since 2017 JS itself has improved but hasn’t really ever deprecated anything, it just grows and adds terse methods to the language Npm and yarn are among the best package managers React hooks were the only major change you’ve touched on but even they didn’t deprecate class based react or change library semantics very significantly

abraxas 4y ago
> Webpack has been the de facto build system for react since 2017 lol and that's why we saw the emergence of rollup and parcel and snowpack and whatever the hell else came along since then?
- nawgz 4y ago
  I’ve never seen a situation where someone hasn’t tried to rebuild something that’s already working (in a big community like JS land). Some people wanted more performance from their build systems, some people like other languages to do the transpilation, some people thought the configuration options were too heavy and opaque. That’s why we saw ESBuild and rollup. But CRA is still on webpack, and CRA is still the de facto default way to make a new react app. I don’t really see the fact that alternatives exist as implying churn when the same option has been the longest living and most popular.
ricardobeat 4y ago
These are not really counterarguments to the fact that things change a lot here, and newcomers and veterans alike need to continuously learn, and pick the best. None of these started off as the default choice, I remember when each and every one of these was the weird / risky option.
- nawgz 4y ago
  They are very much counter arguments to the idea that there is big churn still happening. Webpack 2 was in CRA in 2017 Redux and MobX have been the #1 and #2 state managements for that whole span, and clearly all the observable libs are successors of MobX after Proxy came out Every language changes, many with breaking version changed that JS avoids I don’t know how you’d point at package management as an issue in JS land It’s just that every single popular community has massive amounts of clones or similar libraries, I don’t know how that qualifies as “churn” though. I maintain my 2017 apps including major version bumps with no issues today, using the same libraries and tools. The argument you’re making was fine in 2016 but is half a decade out of date.
  - ricardobeat 4y ago
    > I maintain my 2017 apps including major version bumps with no issues today Sorry but I have to call bullshit on that, unless you’re taking about tiny one page “apps”. Webpack alone has gone through five major revisions in this time, with large breaking changes meaning all of your plugins and babel extensions needed upgrading (sometimes not readily available), rewriting the entire config, even before you get to upgrade React and dependencies. React Native has changed massively in this timeframe, I’m talking complete API refactoring and packages moving around, not simple function signature changes. This is simply not reality for people working tech jobs. For a glaring example, you say it’s #1, but Redux is dead in the water. I haven’t interviewed a single person in the past two years that wants to use it. The creators have been recommending “just using react.Context” for years and that has clearly had an effect.
    - nawgz 4y ago
      > > I maintain my 2017 apps including major version bumps with no issues today > Sorry but I have to call bullshit on that, unless you’re taking about tiny one page “apps” What a strange stance. It's a React/MobX collaborative model editing internal tool deployed in production to users who generate and analyze models with it. It started on Webpack 2 and React 15 and MobX 4, now it's on Webpack 5 and React 17 and MobX 6. I of course had to update some babel configurations but it was much more version bumping than configuration rebuilding. It still uses decorators and looks like complete dog-shit, and that's my point: the same tricks and patterns available then are not only there, but working identically now. Re: native, I don't believe in React Native or any webview-based "native" replacement anyways, but it's easy to do this as my user-base is interacting with this app from their company-provided laptops anyways. I would willingly concede React Native is an environment with churn, I don't really recall RN every reaching meaningful stability > Redux is dead in the water https://www.npmjs.com/package/redux https://www.npmjs.com/package/redux shows 7M downloads weekly https://www.npmjs.com/package/react-redux https://www.npmjs.com/package/react-redux shows 5M https://www.npmjs.com/package/@reduxjs/toolkit https://www.npmjs.com/package/@reduxjs/toolkit shows 1.5M MobX / MobX React are around 1M/700k Your list of "flummox / redux / unstated / mobx / mobx-state-tree / xstate / apollo / apollo-link-state / swr / react-query / zustand / recoil / jotai" seems to peak at 500k with the exception of "react-query", which I don't really see as applicable to a conversation about state management. Overall, this list perfectly illustrates my point that there's new stuff but you don't need to know it, and the value props aren't convincing alive-and-well shops to drop everything and rebuild > you say it’s #1, but Redux is dead in the water I never personally believed in Redux, it struck me as a terrible pattern from the start, thus why I selected MobX; but I find it difficult to believe that you really think React Context scales the same way building an external state management tree does. I like React Context, but it doesn't do a very good job of hiding away complexity from the developer as the application grows. Not to mention it does no render-optimization for you. Again, I'm not saying things don't change or that there's not alternatives, but I am saying that someone who learned fundamentals in 2017 is still able to get up-to-speed in the updated versions of the library kings of 2017 in virtually no time, and deliver standard-fare webapps. I say this because I've worked at the same place for over 5 years, I use the same tools, and my users regularly are telling me the tools my team puts in front of them are the gold standard. The churn is long gone, everything you describe would have perfect analogues in any other popular modern language / library ecosystem.

by nawgz 4y ago

abraxas 4y ago

> Webpack has been the de facto build system for react since 2017 lol and that's why we saw the emergence of rollup and parcel and snowpack and whatever the hell else came along since then?

nawgz 4y ago
I’ve never seen a situation where someone hasn’t tried to rebuild something that’s already working (in a big community like JS land). Some people wanted more performance from their build systems, some people like other languages to do the transpilation, some people thought the configuration options were too heavy and opaque. That’s why we saw ESBuild and rollup. But CRA is still on webpack, and CRA is still the de facto default way to make a new react app. I don’t really see the fact that alternatives exist as implying churn when the same option has been the longest living and most popular.

ricardobeat 4y ago

These are not really counterarguments to the fact that things change a lot here, and newcomers and veterans alike need to continuously learn, and pick the best. None of these started off as the default choice, I remember when each and every one of these was the weird / risky option.

nawgz 4y ago
They are very much counter arguments to the idea that there is big churn still happening. Webpack 2 was in CRA in 2017 Redux and MobX have been the #1 and #2 state managements for that whole span, and clearly all the observable libs are successors of MobX after Proxy came out Every language changes, many with breaking version changed that JS avoids I don’t know how you’d point at package management as an issue in JS land It’s just that every single popular community has massive amounts of clones or similar libraries, I don’t know how that qualifies as “churn” though. I maintain my 2017 apps including major version bumps with no issues today, using the same libraries and tools. The argument you’re making was fine in 2016 but is half a decade out of date.
- ricardobeat 4y ago
  > I maintain my 2017 apps including major version bumps with no issues today Sorry but I have to call bullshit on that, unless you’re taking about tiny one page “apps”. Webpack alone has gone through five major revisions in this time, with large breaking changes meaning all of your plugins and babel extensions needed upgrading (sometimes not readily available), rewriting the entire config, even before you get to upgrade React and dependencies. React Native has changed massively in this timeframe, I’m talking complete API refactoring and packages moving around, not simple function signature changes. This is simply not reality for people working tech jobs. For a glaring example, you say it’s #1, but Redux is dead in the water. I haven’t interviewed a single person in the past two years that wants to use it. The creators have been recommending “just using react.Context” for years and that has clearly had an effect.
  - nawgz 4y ago
    > > I maintain my 2017 apps including major version bumps with no issues today > Sorry but I have to call bullshit on that, unless you’re taking about tiny one page “apps” What a strange stance. It's a React/MobX collaborative model editing internal tool deployed in production to users who generate and analyze models with it. It started on Webpack 2 and React 15 and MobX 4, now it's on Webpack 5 and React 17 and MobX 6. I of course had to update some babel configurations but it was much more version bumping than configuration rebuilding. It still uses decorators and looks like complete dog-shit, and that's my point: the same tricks and patterns available then are not only there, but working identically now. Re: native, I don't believe in React Native or any webview-based "native" replacement anyways, but it's easy to do this as my user-base is interacting with this app from their company-provided laptops anyways. I would willingly concede React Native is an environment with churn, I don't really recall RN every reaching meaningful stability > Redux is dead in the water https://www.npmjs.com/package/redux https://www.npmjs.com/package/redux shows 7M downloads weekly https://www.npmjs.com/package/react-redux https://www.npmjs.com/package/react-redux shows 5M https://www.npmjs.com/package/@reduxjs/toolkit https://www.npmjs.com/package/@reduxjs/toolkit shows 1.5M MobX / MobX React are around 1M/700k Your list of "flummox / redux / unstated / mobx / mobx-state-tree / xstate / apollo / apollo-link-state / swr / react-query / zustand / recoil / jotai" seems to peak at 500k with the exception of "react-query", which I don't really see as applicable to a conversation about state management. Overall, this list perfectly illustrates my point that there's new stuff but you don't need to know it, and the value props aren't convincing alive-and-well shops to drop everything and rebuild > you say it’s #1, but Redux is dead in the water I never personally believed in Redux, it struck me as a terrible pattern from the start, thus why I selected MobX; but I find it difficult to believe that you really think React Context scales the same way building an external state management tree does. I like React Context, but it doesn't do a very good job of hiding away complexity from the developer as the application grows. Not to mention it does no render-optimization for you. Again, I'm not saying things don't change or that there's not alternatives, but I am saying that someone who learned fundamentals in 2017 is still able to get up-to-speed in the updated versions of the library kings of 2017 in virtually no time, and deliver standard-fare webapps. I say this because I've worked at the same place for over 5 years, I use the same tools, and my users regularly are telling me the tools my team puts in front of them are the gold standard. The churn is long gone, everything you describe would have perfect analogues in any other popular modern language / library ecosystem.