4 ms·

I'm pretty sad this is the point we are at with React frontend development, the library is becoming much larger than it's original scope and it's getting bloate

I'm pretty sad this is the point we are at with React frontend development, the library is becoming much larger than it's original scope and it's getting bloated while not solving the essential problems that happen. In my opinion the best solution we have right now for frontend JS development is to not use JS or JSX at all and instead use a DSL such as Svelte, this way the compiler abstracts all complication and there is no application bundle size bloat. Obviously we have Preact (which solves react-dom bloat), MobX (which solves state management), etc. which are all great tools but the problem is that every tech stack is different and the more the core technology can do without getting more bloated the easier it is to introduce new developers to a codebase and keep up with changes.

nine_k 4y ago
Svelte does wonders to code size, indeed. But does it solve the problem of growing state which never gets GC'd when components which used to use it are gone? Does it solve the problem of only redrawing the required minimum (beside the normal VDOM approach)? I'm asking as someone not knowledgeable enough about Svelte.
- doodlesdev 4y ago
  > Does it solve the problem of only redrawing the required minimum (beside the normal VDOM approach)? Yes, in fact I think it's actually pretty hard _not_ to redraw the bare minimum LOL. If you want to know more about Svelte (even if you're not looking to develop with it) I HIGHLY recommend listening to this presentation called "Rethinking reactivity" by Rich Harris (the creator) https://youtu.be/AdNJ3fydeao https://youtu.be/AdNJ3fydeao > But does it solve the problem of growing state which never gets GC'd when components which used to use it are gone? I think the answer to the question is yes. Although the problem I'm speaking mostly about state management is the source of truth problem. Svelte provides a global store to store data, and data stored on local components are just _variables_ (no useState or hooks or anything complicated) where the Svelte compiler handles everything. Something else I'm really eyeing right now is SolidJS which takes a very similar approach to Svelte (compiler instead of library) for frontend development but provides an API that's very familiar to React developers so there's not much of a learning curve (although Svelte has a very easy learning curve too).
rglover 4y ago
This is why I'm building Joystick: https://github.com/cheatcode/joystick https://github.com/cheatcode/joystick. It riffs on the old, simple APIs of React but uses pure HTML, CSS, and JavaScript w/o any trickery (I'm also hardcore about not changing the component API so WYSIWYG). The bonus is that it's a part of a full-stack framework (the UI framework has a Node.js counterpart), so wiring up a full app is near-effortless.
- doodlesdev 4y ago
  Looks pretty interesting, I'm always kind of bothered about the lack of (true) full-stack frameworks for the NodeJS ecosystem that handles accounts, database, frontend, API, etc. like we have for Python with Django or C# with .NET.
  - rglover 4y ago
    Thanks. Likewise, and that's the driving motivation here.
sachinraja 4y ago
How is React not solving essential problems? Suspense solves a pretty essential issue. Also Svelte can quickly increase in bundle size and if you have enough components, it can become bigger than the equivalent in other frameworks: https://github.com/yyx990803/vue-svelte-size-analysis https://github.com/yyx990803/vue-svelte-size-analysis.
- doodlesdev 4y ago
  The first version of React was released on 2013, it took almost 10 years for Suspense to exist (we _just_ got it now with React 18), that's what I'm talking about. Even functional components and hooks took a lot of time from them get and implement the idea after they tried to use ES classes and made everything much harder to manage. Context also isn't perfect, I like it but the redraw performance is not amazing and doesn't scale at all to bigger applications. > https://github.com/yyx990803/vue-svelte-size-analysis https://github.com/yyx990803/vue-svelte-size-analysis This is an interesting comparison I haven't seen before, I wonder if it's true for a complete application using some lib for state management, routing, etc. and if this isn't just a kind of cherry picked example. Thanks for showing this though.

nine_k 4y ago

Svelte does wonders to code size, indeed. But does it solve the problem of growing state which never gets GC'd when components which used to use it are gone? Does it solve the problem of only redrawing the required minimum (beside the normal VDOM approach)? I'm asking as someone not knowledgeable enough about Svelte.

doodlesdev 4y ago
> Does it solve the problem of only redrawing the required minimum (beside the normal VDOM approach)? Yes, in fact I think it's actually pretty hard _not_ to redraw the bare minimum LOL. If you want to know more about Svelte (even if you're not looking to develop with it) I HIGHLY recommend listening to this presentation called "Rethinking reactivity" by Rich Harris (the creator) https://youtu.be/AdNJ3fydeao https://youtu.be/AdNJ3fydeao > But does it solve the problem of growing state which never gets GC'd when components which used to use it are gone? I think the answer to the question is yes. Although the problem I'm speaking mostly about state management is the source of truth problem. Svelte provides a global store to store data, and data stored on local components are just _variables_ (no useState or hooks or anything complicated) where the Svelte compiler handles everything. Something else I'm really eyeing right now is SolidJS which takes a very similar approach to Svelte (compiler instead of library) for frontend development but provides an API that's very familiar to React developers so there's not much of a learning curve (although Svelte has a very easy learning curve too).

rglover 4y ago

This is why I'm building Joystick: https://github.com/cheatcode/joystick https://github.com/cheatcode/joystick. It riffs on the old, simple APIs of React but uses pure HTML, CSS, and JavaScript w/o any trickery (I'm also hardcore about not changing the component API so WYSIWYG). The bonus is that it's a part of a full-stack framework (the UI framework has a Node.js counterpart), so wiring up a full app is near-effortless.

doodlesdev 4y ago
Looks pretty interesting, I'm always kind of bothered about the lack of (true) full-stack frameworks for the NodeJS ecosystem that handles accounts, database, frontend, API, etc. like we have for Python with Django or C# with .NET.
- rglover 4y ago
  Thanks. Likewise, and that's the driving motivation here.

sachinraja 4y ago

How is React not solving essential problems? Suspense solves a pretty essential issue. Also Svelte can quickly increase in bundle size and if you have enough components, it can become bigger than the equivalent in other frameworks: https://github.com/yyx990803/vue-svelte-size-analysis https://github.com/yyx990803/vue-svelte-size-analysis.

doodlesdev 4y ago
The first version of React was released on 2013, it took almost 10 years for Suspense to exist (we _just_ got it now with React 18), that's what I'm talking about. Even functional components and hooks took a lot of time from them get and implement the idea after they tried to use ES classes and made everything much harder to manage. Context also isn't perfect, I like it but the redraw performance is not amazing and doesn't scale at all to bigger applications. > https://github.com/yyx990803/vue-svelte-size-analysis https://github.com/yyx990803/vue-svelte-size-analysis This is an interesting comparison I haven't seen before, I wonder if it's true for a complete application using some lib for state management, routing, etc. and if this isn't just a kind of cherry picked example. Thanks for showing this though.