5 ms·

+1 React DX is really great. It started really great and it got weird and bloated but it's still really great relative to the JS landscape hell. But, also yes,

by apsurd 1y ago

+1 React DX is really great. It started really great and it got weird and bloated but it's still really great relative to the JS landscape hell. But, also yes, it's a pain in the ass and a frustrating kind of necessary evil. So there is room for improvements. Nextjs is a living hell. The ironic thing is AI makes it dramatically more tolerable to the point it's actually pretty good. But that can't be a good thing in terms of architectural design can it? We're in odd times. Of course, it's easy to be a hater on the sidelines. I am guilty. Nextjs likely just does too much in it's own made-from-scratch clever way. use-client vs server is just out-of-the gate ridiculous. But then I suppose the real question is "well if you want isomorphic environment, how else are you going to do it?". My answers is "I wouldn't!" but then vercel and the powers that be seem to have won the mindshare of the product crowd. At least for now.

thomaslord 1y ago
Honestly I think React DX kinda sucks, at least in some areas. Performance is one of the worst (`useMemo` and `componentShouldUpdate` are way to easy to ignore, constant re-renders are the norm and writing performant React code requires conscious effort to avoid footguns) but it's also just less self-explanatory than the alternatives I've tried. I started doing web dev before reactivity frameworks were a thing, and I found Vue to be the most intuitive of the frameworks available when I first needed reactivity. To me, Vue feels like HTML with superpowers while React feels like a whole new way of thinking about webapps. I'm honestly a bit surprised that the article doesn't mention Vue, since Vue is (and has been for a while) the most popular "not React or Angular" framework option. Newer versions of Vue even support the "disappearing framework" feature Svelte was built for, which I'm excited to take advantage of when my biggest work project finally moves to Vue 3.
- apsurd 1y ago
  I think you've nailed it. It does come down to user preference. React _is_ a whole new way of thinking. Back in the days of jQuery it was very painful to stitch together web experience across HTML+CSS+JS. jquery provided much needed DX around utilities to navigate across these pieces. But it was still way too easy to treat HTML like your database and model user-state across a Frankenstein of server, json, html, and javascript. React was a paradigm shift. "Screw it, everything is javascript." The web depends on js runtime, we know we're going to need it. It starts to makes the best future-forward sense to use the only full programming runtime available. From DX pov this was spectacular to speed up prototyping. And you can finally truly model state purely from data. What followed was a huge a mess (redux), but I always say, what do we expect? The web is a mess, and it's great because it's useful. Humans are a mess! --- VUE: similar to angular I just don't align with "super-powered html attributes". It just doesn't make sense as a mental model. Because it's _not_ HTML spec and HTML is not a programming language. The more powerful the framework gets the more we reinvent a pseudo-programming language _through_ HTML. Angular was full-stop a no-go when I first saw it's for-loops in HTML.
  - recursive 1y ago
    Neither react's JSX nor vue's template language are HTML. But rejecting vue's template on grounds that it's not HTML seems odd. React's JSX deviates from HTML in many ways. Like class vs className. XML self-closing vs HTML self-closing. onchange vs oninput. On purely aesthetic grounds, I can't understand how the react idiom of array.map() would ever be preferable to an affordance in the (non-HTML) template language for handling this normal standard thing that always happens.
    - apsurd 1y ago
      it's not about feigning html purity it's the opposite. Why pretend we're using HTML when it's not? so with react it becomes a js flavor, jsx, which some people hate but it's very clear that it's a made up language IN real javascript. edit: the mental model is instant: it's just javascript for reals. do anything you want in javascript using real js primitives. it's not about looking pretty, jsx doesn't. it's about not relearning basic programming primitives in a made up _markup_ language. my issue with angular is it's neither real html nor any programming language. its made up pseudo-programming language for no other reason than it fools people into thinking "it's just HTML". that's my gripe.
      - markmark 1y ago
        Completely agree with you. Every time I see yet another template language adding some clumsy for-each loop syntax I sigh. Just let us use a normal programming language. As an example I give you every template system ever invented. Devops tooling is full of them.
        recursive 1y ago
        Over the years, I've seen a few posts like this that seem to take it as a given that a loop in a normal programming language is better than foreach capability in a template language. Certainly enough times to believe that a significant group of people actually believe it's superior. There's not a difference in capability of expression of the two models. It seems to be a purely aesthetic or comfort difference. I guess different people like different things.
jjordan 1y ago
I don't really recommend isomorphic environments, but if it's your cup of tea, Tanstack Start is making a lot of progress. It removes all of the magic and misdirection of Nextjs and just provides a good light alternative.
- koakuma-chan 1y ago
  AFAIK "TanStack" doesn't support RSCs? That's a deal breaker for me. Also the guy named his framework after himself, it can't be good.
  - staminade 1y ago
    Linus named Linux after himself, it can't be good!
  - collingreen 1y ago
    Linux also sucks for this reason /s
  - presentation 1y ago
    They built a half baked version of it and then haven’t finished it for a while but maybe they’ll get back to it sometime.
  - Swizec 1y ago
    For the record, the TanStack name comes from the community. Eventually Tanner stopped fighting back and made it official
  - jjordan 1y ago
    What do you get from RSCs that you don't get from creating a proper backend?
    - koakuma-chan 1y ago
      Having to glue the front-end and the back-end together.
AlexErrant 1y ago
React DX is hot garbage. Words cannot express how much I LOATHE hook rules. Coming from a Solid JS background, where reactive primitives are just Javascript functions... I groan every single time I run into (yet another) hook rule. I have to conditionally render empty fragments because React can't handle conditional hooks. It's the stupidest thing ever. "Oh hey let me allocate memory for this hook that will almost certainly never be used except under edge conditions! Sure, React can do conditional components, but conditional hooks are just too much for us!"
- dgfitz 1y ago
  I read things like this and think “I am so glad I don’t write JavaScript/ web-anything for a living”
  - collingreen 1y ago
    cries in ts backend, react frontend, react-mobile client
- b_e_n_t_o_n 1y ago
  Hooks are also just JavaScript functions...?
  - thomasfromcdnjs 1y ago
    They kind of are not though, you can't call them out of order and other things which is checked at runtime by the React "engine" and will stop script execution. If they were regular functions you could call them anytime.
    - b_e_n_t_o_n 1y ago
      Many "regular" functions are context dependent.
      - DangitBobby 1y ago
827a 1y ago
Next initially jumped the shark when they went all-in on server-side rendering. The reason why Vercel did this is clear: client-side rendered apps can be hosted basically for free on Firebase, Cloudflare, or S3, so the only way they can raise their Vercel cloud revenue is by forcing their users into a dynamic-first world, pushing so much complexity and dynamism into the framework that only Vercel could disentangle how to host it effectively. The less-dystopic reasons they communicated as to why customers might want SSR; improved time-to-first-byte and a more PHP/Rails-like programming model; while well-intentioned, ultimately became of questionable value to customers given their choices during implementation. I do actually believe a more PHP/Rails-like programming model would be beneficial for React; Vercel just missed the extremely important detail in how Rails is so dang productive. Its not their decisions when it comes to HTML templating; its Active Record.
- Seattle3503 1y ago
  I had a friend rave to me about Next because, to him, page load times were absolutely essential for good search engine placement. I wonder LLMs will make this sort of SEO less important.
Nathanba 1y ago
React DX is probably the worst DX of all frontend frameworks I've ever seen. All kinds of confusing concepts (hooks, memo, props passing, class style vs function style, an entire new "language" like JSX which you then first need to install an IDE extension for) and you cant even begin a react project most of the time without using some kind of react starter template because building this thing is so hugely complex that people just give up. Then you constantly run into issues of double rendering with reactjs which is quite hard to debug. I was hoping for something tiny like https://www.arrow-js.com/ https://www.arrow-js.com/ taking off but the creator doesn't really work on it.

by apsurd 1y ago

thomaslord 1y ago

Honestly I think React DX kinda sucks, at least in some areas. Performance is one of the worst (`useMemo` and `componentShouldUpdate` are way to easy to ignore, constant re-renders are the norm and writing performant React code requires conscious effort to avoid footguns) but it's also just less self-explanatory than the alternatives I've tried. I started doing web dev before reactivity frameworks were a thing, and I found Vue to be the most intuitive of the frameworks available when I first needed reactivity. To me, Vue feels like HTML with superpowers while React feels like a whole new way of thinking about webapps. I'm honestly a bit surprised that the article doesn't mention Vue, since Vue is (and has been for a while) the most popular "not React or Angular" framework option. Newer versions of Vue even support the "disappearing framework" feature Svelte was built for, which I'm excited to take advantage of when my biggest work project finally moves to Vue 3.

apsurd 1y ago
I think you've nailed it. It does come down to user preference. React _is_ a whole new way of thinking. Back in the days of jQuery it was very painful to stitch together web experience across HTML+CSS+JS. jquery provided much needed DX around utilities to navigate across these pieces. But it was still way too easy to treat HTML like your database and model user-state across a Frankenstein of server, json, html, and javascript. React was a paradigm shift. "Screw it, everything is javascript." The web depends on js runtime, we know we're going to need it. It starts to makes the best future-forward sense to use the only full programming runtime available. From DX pov this was spectacular to speed up prototyping. And you can finally truly model state purely from data. What followed was a huge a mess (redux), but I always say, what do we expect? The web is a mess, and it's great because it's useful. Humans are a mess! --- VUE: similar to angular I just don't align with "super-powered html attributes". It just doesn't make sense as a mental model. Because it's _not_ HTML spec and HTML is not a programming language. The more powerful the framework gets the more we reinvent a pseudo-programming language _through_ HTML. Angular was full-stop a no-go when I first saw it's for-loops in HTML.
- recursive 1y ago
  Neither react's JSX nor vue's template language are HTML. But rejecting vue's template on grounds that it's not HTML seems odd. React's JSX deviates from HTML in many ways. Like class vs className. XML self-closing vs HTML self-closing. onchange vs oninput. On purely aesthetic grounds, I can't understand how the react idiom of array.map() would ever be preferable to an affordance in the (non-HTML) template language for handling this normal standard thing that always happens.
  - apsurd 1y ago
    it's not about feigning html purity it's the opposite. Why pretend we're using HTML when it's not? so with react it becomes a js flavor, jsx, which some people hate but it's very clear that it's a made up language IN real javascript. edit: the mental model is instant: it's just javascript for reals. do anything you want in javascript using real js primitives. it's not about looking pretty, jsx doesn't. it's about not relearning basic programming primitives in a made up _markup_ language. my issue with angular is it's neither real html nor any programming language. its made up pseudo-programming language for no other reason than it fools people into thinking "it's just HTML". that's my gripe.
    - markmark 1y ago
      Completely agree with you. Every time I see yet another template language adding some clumsy for-each loop syntax I sigh. Just let us use a normal programming language. As an example I give you every template system ever invented. Devops tooling is full of them.
      - recursive 1y ago
        Over the years, I've seen a few posts like this that seem to take it as a given that a loop in a normal programming language is better than foreach capability in a template language. Certainly enough times to believe that a significant group of people actually believe it's superior. There's not a difference in capability of expression of the two models. It seems to be a purely aesthetic or comfort difference. I guess different people like different things.

jjordan 1y ago

I don't really recommend isomorphic environments, but if it's your cup of tea, Tanstack Start is making a lot of progress. It removes all of the magic and misdirection of Nextjs and just provides a good light alternative.

koakuma-chan 1y ago
AFAIK "TanStack" doesn't support RSCs? That's a deal breaker for me. Also the guy named his framework after himself, it can't be good.
- staminade 1y ago
  Linus named Linux after himself, it can't be good!
- collingreen 1y ago
  Linux also sucks for this reason /s
- presentation 1y ago
  They built a half baked version of it and then haven’t finished it for a while but maybe they’ll get back to it sometime.
- Swizec 1y ago
  For the record, the TanStack name comes from the community. Eventually Tanner stopped fighting back and made it official
- jjordan 1y ago
  What do you get from RSCs that you don't get from creating a proper backend?
  - koakuma-chan 1y ago
    Having to glue the front-end and the back-end together.

AlexErrant 1y ago

React DX is hot garbage. Words cannot express how much I LOATHE hook rules. Coming from a Solid JS background, where reactive primitives are just Javascript functions... I groan every single time I run into (yet another) hook rule. I have to conditionally render empty fragments because React can't handle conditional hooks. It's the stupidest thing ever. "Oh hey let me allocate memory for this hook that will almost certainly never be used except under edge conditions! Sure, React can do conditional components, but conditional hooks are just too much for us!"

dgfitz 1y ago
I read things like this and think “I am so glad I don’t write JavaScript/ web-anything for a living”
- collingreen 1y ago
  cries in ts backend, react frontend, react-mobile client
b_e_n_t_o_n 1y ago
Hooks are also just JavaScript functions...?
- thomasfromcdnjs 1y ago
  They kind of are not though, you can't call them out of order and other things which is checked at runtime by the React "engine" and will stop script execution. If they were regular functions you could call them anytime.
  - b_e_n_t_o_n 1y ago
    Many "regular" functions are context dependent.
    - DangitBobby 1y ago

827a 1y ago

Next initially jumped the shark when they went all-in on server-side rendering. The reason why Vercel did this is clear: client-side rendered apps can be hosted basically for free on Firebase, Cloudflare, or S3, so the only way they can raise their Vercel cloud revenue is by forcing their users into a dynamic-first world, pushing so much complexity and dynamism into the framework that only Vercel could disentangle how to host it effectively. The less-dystopic reasons they communicated as to why customers might want SSR; improved time-to-first-byte and a more PHP/Rails-like programming model; while well-intentioned, ultimately became of questionable value to customers given their choices during implementation. I do actually believe a more PHP/Rails-like programming model would be beneficial for React; Vercel just missed the extremely important detail in how Rails is so dang productive. Its not their decisions when it comes to HTML templating; its Active Record.

Seattle3503 1y ago
I had a friend rave to me about Next because, to him, page load times were absolutely essential for good search engine placement. I wonder LLMs will make this sort of SEO less important.

Nathanba 1y ago

React DX is probably the worst DX of all frontend frameworks I've ever seen. All kinds of confusing concepts (hooks, memo, props passing, class style vs function style, an entire new "language" like JSX which you then first need to install an IDE extension for) and you cant even begin a react project most of the time without using some kind of react starter template because building this thing is so hugely complex that people just give up. Then you constantly run into issues of double rendering with reactjs which is quite hard to debug. I was hoping for something tiny like https://www.arrow-js.com/ https://www.arrow-js.com/ taking off but the creator doesn't really work on it.