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>For a static page it doesn't make sense to use React, obviously JSX is a nice templating language. And when you use Deno or Bun you can use it directly on ser

>For a static page it doesn't make sense to use React, obviously JSX is a nice templating language. And when you use Deno or Bun you can use it directly on server-side. My server-side components have no hooks and use preact-render-to-string or `renderToString()` from `react-dom/server`. Also there is Gatsby which is a popular content management system which also allow non-interactive statically rendered pages (as far as I remember).

benatkin 3y ago
> you can use it directly Because of a poor design choice in an otherwise well designed platform (at least in the case of Deno).
NathanaelRea 3y ago
Or Astro, and plugins for React/Tailwindcss/etc. Components are just nice to work with because of their modularity. Using the ergonomics "most web devs" are familiar with is just nice.
mvdtnz 3y ago
JSX is a mediocre templating language that's missing a ton of features from more mature templating languages like Razor
- tauchunfall 3y ago
  >JSX is a mediocre templating language You can also complain about JSON being a mediocre data format. But I think it's minimalism and compatibility with JS made it successful.
- teaearlgraycold 3y ago
  I don’t know Razor but I agree. JSX could use an overhaul.
- forgotusername6 3y ago
  What's it missing?
  - richeyryan 3y ago
    I suspect they want better condition handling. Because JavaScript lacks a useful conditional expression beyond ternary expressions, condition handling in JSX generally uses boolean operators or ternary expressions. Suppose the conditional logic is in any way complex. In that case, your choice is to use nested ternary expressions, which can be hard to read or to somehow break the condition out of the JSX using a helper function or separate component so you can use if statements in a regular function context. SolidJS added conditional helpers to its JSX flavour to address this issue[1]. The React team seems ideologically opposed to the idea as it presumably moves JSX away from using only JavaScript for handling logic. [1]https://www.solidjs.com/docs/latest/api#show https://www.solidjs.com/docs/latest/api#show
    - tauchunfall 3y ago
      >I suspect they want better condition handling. Because JavaScript lacks a useful conditional expression beyond ternary expressions, condition handling in JSX generally uses boolean operators or ternary expressions. If a condition in JSX gets too complex I normally extract a component-level function and call it from the JSX part of the component.
  - _betty_ 3y ago
    knowing both i used to be frustrated by jsx's lack of support for plain if and for loops like razor has (eg map and the weird && syntax we general end up with) eg ``` <ul> @foreach(var item in list) { <li>@item.name</li> } </ul> ``` of course this idea goes against jsx's implementation (as it's just nested functions) and paradigm of being html in plain javascript rather than an interpreted templating language. some of the differences i really like (like being able to assign compoents to variables, pretty sure razor doesn't have anything like that).
    - javcasas 3y ago
- pharmakom 3y ago
  Why do we need a templating language at all? Syntax is inferior to data.
  - mvdtnz 3y ago
    How do you suggest we display that data in a web page?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- wonnage 3y ago
  It’s actually a fine language and these sorts of edgelord comments are the most annoying part of HN
  - tauchunfall 3y ago
    That's true. It's missing "a ton of features" but the question is, if these missing features in the template language stop us from building correct and maintainable web applications. Having that said: We are fine with JSX. Using Razor obviously did not stop Microsoft from building buggy web applications.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- moritzwarhier 3y ago
  JS is missing switch/match expressions, that's pretty much all IMO. And I commend the maintainers of JSX for refusing to extend its syntax. JSX can be learned in 15 minutes and it is a macro usually used to wrap React.createElement. You could just as well swap your bundler plugin and use some other type of macro, e.g. sth like Mithril's m. JSX is a very slim basic concept and I don't know a single gotcha except for the renamed attributes/props that are otherwise reserved keywords (htmlFor, className). That you can use/see it as a templating language is just a part of its appeal. I loathe having to use dedicated templating languages, having worked with Mustache and various PHP templating languages such as Blade and Twig. Maybe "loathe" is a strong wors because most of the time it's easy and just works. But when it doesn't, debugging is a nightmare. Escaping rules and questions like "what is code, what is a just an uninterpreted string" become unpredictable, and you have to learn useless baggage for each of them. Same goes for all the JS DSLs using HTML attributes (Vue 2 "templates", which are actually not templates, etc). This is also what turns me off about htmx. It'a great to throw together a specialized solution for one problem, but not great for libraries inventing unnecessary proprietary languages.
  - tauchunfall 3y ago
    >don't know a single gotcha except for the renamed attributes/props that are otherwise reserved keywords (htmlFor, className). This is related to `React.createElement`, I think. Preact does not have this problem. For client-heavy web applications I prefer React over Preact (not all libraries work well with Preact), but server-heavy web applications are fine with Preact.
  - Stoids 3y ago
    ts-pattern has been a decent band-aid for the lack of native pattern matching, but obviously has downsides that could be avoided if it was built into the language. https://github.com/gvergnaud/ts-pattern https://github.com/gvergnaud/ts-pattern
- lucsky 3y ago
  I had no idea what Razor was (I'm not a C# guy, I don't like to work on mediocre platforms... (see what I did here?)) so I read about it a lil' bit and could not find a single thing that it does that JSX cannot. Not one.

benatkin 3y ago

> you can use it directly Because of a poor design choice in an otherwise well designed platform (at least in the case of Deno).

NathanaelRea 3y ago

Or Astro, and plugins for React/Tailwindcss/etc. Components are just nice to work with because of their modularity. Using the ergonomics "most web devs" are familiar with is just nice.

mvdtnz 3y ago

JSX is a mediocre templating language that's missing a ton of features from more mature templating languages like Razor

tauchunfall 3y ago
>JSX is a mediocre templating language You can also complain about JSON being a mediocre data format. But I think it's minimalism and compatibility with JS made it successful.
teaearlgraycold 3y ago
I don’t know Razor but I agree. JSX could use an overhaul.
forgotusername6 3y ago
What's it missing?
- richeyryan 3y ago
  I suspect they want better condition handling. Because JavaScript lacks a useful conditional expression beyond ternary expressions, condition handling in JSX generally uses boolean operators or ternary expressions. Suppose the conditional logic is in any way complex. In that case, your choice is to use nested ternary expressions, which can be hard to read or to somehow break the condition out of the JSX using a helper function or separate component so you can use if statements in a regular function context. SolidJS added conditional helpers to its JSX flavour to address this issue[1]. The React team seems ideologically opposed to the idea as it presumably moves JSX away from using only JavaScript for handling logic. [1]https://www.solidjs.com/docs/latest/api#show https://www.solidjs.com/docs/latest/api#show
  - tauchunfall 3y ago
    >I suspect they want better condition handling. Because JavaScript lacks a useful conditional expression beyond ternary expressions, condition handling in JSX generally uses boolean operators or ternary expressions. If a condition in JSX gets too complex I normally extract a component-level function and call it from the JSX part of the component.
- _betty_ 3y ago
  knowing both i used to be frustrated by jsx's lack of support for plain if and for loops like razor has (eg map and the weird && syntax we general end up with) eg ``` <ul> @foreach(var item in list) { <li>@item.name</li> } </ul> ``` of course this idea goes against jsx's implementation (as it's just nested functions) and paradigm of being html in plain javascript rather than an interpreted templating language. some of the differences i really like (like being able to assign compoents to variables, pretty sure razor doesn't have anything like that).
  - javcasas 3y ago
pharmakom 3y ago
Why do we need a templating language at all? Syntax is inferior to data.
- mvdtnz 3y ago
  How do you suggest we display that data in a web page?
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
wonnage 3y ago
It’s actually a fine language and these sorts of edgelord comments are the most annoying part of HN
- tauchunfall 3y ago
  That's true. It's missing "a ton of features" but the question is, if these missing features in the template language stop us from building correct and maintainable web applications. Having that said: We are fine with JSX. Using Razor obviously did not stop Microsoft from building buggy web applications.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
moritzwarhier 3y ago
JS is missing switch/match expressions, that's pretty much all IMO. And I commend the maintainers of JSX for refusing to extend its syntax. JSX can be learned in 15 minutes and it is a macro usually used to wrap React.createElement. You could just as well swap your bundler plugin and use some other type of macro, e.g. sth like Mithril's m. JSX is a very slim basic concept and I don't know a single gotcha except for the renamed attributes/props that are otherwise reserved keywords (htmlFor, className). That you can use/see it as a templating language is just a part of its appeal. I loathe having to use dedicated templating languages, having worked with Mustache and various PHP templating languages such as Blade and Twig. Maybe "loathe" is a strong wors because most of the time it's easy and just works. But when it doesn't, debugging is a nightmare. Escaping rules and questions like "what is code, what is a just an uninterpreted string" become unpredictable, and you have to learn useless baggage for each of them. Same goes for all the JS DSLs using HTML attributes (Vue 2 "templates", which are actually not templates, etc). This is also what turns me off about htmx. It'a great to throw together a specialized solution for one problem, but not great for libraries inventing unnecessary proprietary languages.
- tauchunfall 3y ago
  >don't know a single gotcha except for the renamed attributes/props that are otherwise reserved keywords (htmlFor, className). This is related to `React.createElement`, I think. Preact does not have this problem. For client-heavy web applications I prefer React over Preact (not all libraries work well with Preact), but server-heavy web applications are fine with Preact.
- Stoids 3y ago
  ts-pattern has been a decent band-aid for the lack of native pattern matching, but obviously has downsides that could be avoided if it was built into the language. https://github.com/gvergnaud/ts-pattern https://github.com/gvergnaud/ts-pattern
lucsky 3y ago
I had no idea what Razor was (I'm not a C# guy, I don't like to work on mediocre platforms... (see what I did here?)) so I read about it a lil' bit and could not find a single thing that it does that JSX cannot. Not one.