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I would be interested to know what exactly React solves when we already have so many options - Ember, Angular, Backbone to do the same thing. Why would one wan

by sahat 13y ago

I would be interested to know what exactly React solves when we already have so many options - Ember, Angular, Backbone to do the same thing. Why would one want to increase the complexity of the application by introducing "yet another new thing" on an already complex architecture. I am just not sold on React. If someone could show a demo of why should we use React instead of, Backbone.View for example, then we can talk.

plaguuuuuu 13y ago
I'm just reading about React now, but it seems it might be appropriate when you have a lot of stuff that needs to be reused Then again, Knockout would also be pretty good at this, so I dunno. There are a lot of criteria for evaluating a framework... development speed, maintainability, simplicity, functionality. And a lot of it is better evaluated experientially rather than theoretically.
- aymeric 13y ago
  Knockout.js is slow. React seems fast thanks to their virtual DOM. It matters when you want to develop a web app that caters for mobile clients too.
TheHydroImpulse 13y ago
I think you could break it down into several benefits. 1) Performance -- React, with it's Virtual DOM, and the new idea to treat the DOM as an expensive remote rendering pipeline will give you a huge performance boost. 2) Compose-ability & Modularity -- While React only serves as the "view", there's huge potential for really decoupling your application. 3) Library, not framework -- The notion that React is simply a library is awesome. While I'm not a huge fan of the 1000nd super small libraries to make up your app, without any magic or complexity; I enjoy not being locked-in to a particular solution. Especially when new (potential) solutions are being presented regularly. I think modularity will win in the end. If React doesn't serve your needs in 6 months, then you can easily (still involves work, though) switch it out for something better. But, if you use something like Ember.js, you're tied into it's ecosystem and framework.
trekforever 13y ago
I think the biggest reason to use React is how it handles the DOM. In most framework views, DOM access is slow and can be a bottleneck. React addresses that problem by using a virtual DOM. In order to make a change to the real DOM, React computes a diff between the newly virtual DOM and the previously computed virtual DOM, and then it applies the diff to the real DOM. The triggering to the virtual DOM computation is done explicitly, hence React has a lot better DOM rendering performances. Everything you can do in React, you can do with other frameworks (Angular's directives and isolated scopes for example), but React is a lot faster and easier to learn, and definitely worth looking into.

by sahat 13y ago

plaguuuuuu 13y ago

I'm just reading about React now, but it seems it might be appropriate when you have a lot of stuff that needs to be reused Then again, Knockout would also be pretty good at this, so I dunno. There are a lot of criteria for evaluating a framework... development speed, maintainability, simplicity, functionality. And a lot of it is better evaluated experientially rather than theoretically.

aymeric 13y ago
Knockout.js is slow. React seems fast thanks to their virtual DOM. It matters when you want to develop a web app that caters for mobile clients too.

TheHydroImpulse 13y ago

I think you could break it down into several benefits. 1) Performance -- React, with it's Virtual DOM, and the new idea to treat the DOM as an expensive remote rendering pipeline will give you a huge performance boost. 2) Compose-ability & Modularity -- While React only serves as the "view", there's huge potential for really decoupling your application. 3) Library, not framework -- The notion that React is simply a library is awesome. While I'm not a huge fan of the 1000nd super small libraries to make up your app, without any magic or complexity; I enjoy not being locked-in to a particular solution. Especially when new (potential) solutions are being presented regularly. I think modularity will win in the end. If React doesn't serve your needs in 6 months, then you can easily (still involves work, though) switch it out for something better. But, if you use something like Ember.js, you're tied into it's ecosystem and framework.

trekforever 13y ago

I think the biggest reason to use React is how it handles the DOM. In most framework views, DOM access is slow and can be a bottleneck. React addresses that problem by using a virtual DOM. In order to make a change to the real DOM, React computes a diff between the newly virtual DOM and the previously computed virtual DOM, and then it applies the diff to the real DOM. The triggering to the virtual DOM computation is done explicitly, hence React has a lot better DOM rendering performances. Everything you can do in React, you can do with other frameworks (Angular's directives and isolated scopes for example), but React is a lot faster and easier to learn, and definitely worth looking into.