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I actually look forward to the day when React is not engulfed in hype, so people will stop complaining that it's just going to go away when the hype dies. Prog

I actually look forward to the day when React is not engulfed in hype, so people will stop complaining that it's just going to go away when the hype dies. Programmers love to make things. When you make something, you want to bash the thing that you are "better" at. This comes will all kinds of blindfolds though (you may be on the right track, but you need to be aware of these blindfolds). There are so many examples as to why his criticisms don't hold. If you don't like something about React, it's easy to make your own base component and add your own Observable semantics. Check out Om, a ClojureScript framework on top of React, which changes all sorts of stuff (https://github.com/omcljs/om https://github.com/omcljs/om). React is a platform (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hGHdETNteE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hGHdETNteE). Why is it so important to reuse React? When you author a new framework, another blindfold is lack of community. You don't understand how important it is that authors of React can download tens to hundreds of incredibly advanced components ready to use (like https://github.com/gaearon/react-dnd https://github.com/gaearon/react-dnd). EDIT: Apparently, this presentation was tongue-in-cheek (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9316187 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9316187), which totally changes everything. I hate just seeing the slides!

Bahamut 12y ago
There are other choices than just React. Many of your same points applies to [insert library/framework]. I think it is important to weigh criticisms just as much as praise. This lets the best ideas get vetted by the community and developers can focus their mindshare solving other important problems.
- jlongster 12y ago
  Sure, except React easily has the largest community yet (with these types of frameworks) so the argument doesn't really stand for other ones. There has to be really good to reasons to switch to something else completely, and really good reasons not to build on top of React. It's definitely important to look at criticisms, but honestly, these aren't very good ones. It would have been easy to build his library on top of React. EDIT: stronger criticisms in my opinions focus on how hard it can be to get started with an advanced app w/React compared to Ember, which takes a "bundle everything in" approach (the classic lib vs framework debate). Ember is a strong contender especially because it has a great community as well.
  - Bahamut 12y ago
    Can you explain what you mean by "these types of frameworks" - do you mean the lighter approach that React takes with purely dominating the view and leaving the rest to the developer?
    - jlongster 12y ago
      Basically, yes, and includes a component-based approach and virtual dom.
deleted 12y ago
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i_s 12y ago
Some of the criticisms the author points out still hold. For example, criticism that React doesn't give a place to plug in to do post-processing on nodes is valid, and is even a point that David Nolen makes in the video you linked to. The author is probably wrong to dismiss React because of all the other benefits, and the community/platform aspects you brought up, but him complaining about these issues (the subset of his issues that are valid, that is) still provides a lot of value to the community.
- jlongster 12y ago
  That's definitely true, it's great to see parts where React doesn't allow people to play with something. It would be a lot more constructive though to build on top of React so we could more easily see the point. Additionally a lot of these problems are well known so before building your own framework, it's worth engaging the React community to see what we are thinking about them.

Bahamut 12y ago

There are other choices than just React. Many of your same points applies to [insert library/framework]. I think it is important to weigh criticisms just as much as praise. This lets the best ideas get vetted by the community and developers can focus their mindshare solving other important problems.

jlongster 12y ago
Sure, except React easily has the largest community yet (with these types of frameworks) so the argument doesn't really stand for other ones. There has to be really good to reasons to switch to something else completely, and really good reasons not to build on top of React. It's definitely important to look at criticisms, but honestly, these aren't very good ones. It would have been easy to build his library on top of React. EDIT: stronger criticisms in my opinions focus on how hard it can be to get started with an advanced app w/React compared to Ember, which takes a "bundle everything in" approach (the classic lib vs framework debate). Ember is a strong contender especially because it has a great community as well.
- Bahamut 12y ago
  Can you explain what you mean by "these types of frameworks" - do you mean the lighter approach that React takes with purely dominating the view and leaving the rest to the developer?
  - jlongster 12y ago
    Basically, yes, and includes a component-based approach and virtual dom.

deleted 12y ago

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i_s 12y ago

Some of the criticisms the author points out still hold. For example, criticism that React doesn't give a place to plug in to do post-processing on nodes is valid, and is even a point that David Nolen makes in the video you linked to. The author is probably wrong to dismiss React because of all the other benefits, and the community/platform aspects you brought up, but him complaining about these issues (the subset of his issues that are valid, that is) still provides a lot of value to the community.

jlongster 12y ago
That's definitely true, it's great to see parts where React doesn't allow people to play with something. It would be a lot more constructive though to build on top of React so we could more easily see the point. Additionally a lot of these problems are well known so before building your own framework, it's worth engaging the React community to see what we are thinking about them.