3 ms·

It's not scary. It's a pretty small API surface. Lots of time is spent on component styling and all that stuff, which isn't React-specific. Web components tech

It's not scary. It's a pretty small API surface. Lots of time is spent on component styling and all that stuff, which isn't React-specific. Web components tech such as Lit might be part of the future, replacing JSX, and then React purely becomes a middleware tool for DOM diffing and shuffling events up and data down.

afavour 1y ago
IMO OP is correct that the bootcamp devs are scary, not React itself. I’ve interviewed a number of engineers who have very little grasp of what the DOM is and how it works because React abstracts the whole thing away. Server components are another are where some niceties mean a bunch of developers aren’t really understanding what’s going on with underlying HTTP requests. While React’s API surface is small the average app will come with a chunk of extra stuff: Redux, next.js, yadda yadda. People take entire courses that never leave that bubble.
joshkel 1y ago
Would you still say it's a small API surface? State, memos, callbacks (which are just memo functions), effects, effect events, reducers, context, external stores, special handling for any tags that go in the `<head>`, form actions, form status, action state, activities, refs, imperative handles, transitions, optimistic updates, deferred updates, suspense, server components, compiler, SSR? Or maybe it's a small enough API but a lot of concepts. Or maybe I'm just grumpy that the days of "it's just a view layer" feel long ago.
- philipallstar 1y ago
  Your list has convinced me that my understanding of React is out of date!
- pyrale 1y ago
  > Or maybe I'm just grumpy that the days of "it's just a view layer" feel long ago. That abstraction was always leaky, in that it begged many more questions that had to be answered. Part of the appleal was that it was limited in the perimeter, and part of the curent situation is that the community around React-the-library created the tools to answer these other questions, which means that React-the-ecosystem is much more complex than React-the-lib.

afavour 1y ago

IMO OP is correct that the bootcamp devs are scary, not React itself. I’ve interviewed a number of engineers who have very little grasp of what the DOM is and how it works because React abstracts the whole thing away. Server components are another are where some niceties mean a bunch of developers aren’t really understanding what’s going on with underlying HTTP requests. While React’s API surface is small the average app will come with a chunk of extra stuff: Redux, next.js, yadda yadda. People take entire courses that never leave that bubble.

joshkel 1y ago

Would you still say it's a small API surface? State, memos, callbacks (which are just memo functions), effects, effect events, reducers, context, external stores, special handling for any tags that go in the `<head>`, form actions, form status, action state, activities, refs, imperative handles, transitions, optimistic updates, deferred updates, suspense, server components, compiler, SSR? Or maybe it's a small enough API but a lot of concepts. Or maybe I'm just grumpy that the days of "it's just a view layer" feel long ago.

philipallstar 1y ago
Your list has convinced me that my understanding of React is out of date!
pyrale 1y ago
> Or maybe I'm just grumpy that the days of "it's just a view layer" feel long ago. That abstraction was always leaky, in that it begged many more questions that had to be answered. Part of the appleal was that it was limited in the perimeter, and part of the curent situation is that the community around React-the-library created the tools to answer these other questions, which means that React-the-ecosystem is much more complex than React-the-lib.