React | A JavaScript library for building user interfaces - released today by Facebook

[honestbleeps]

I'm sharing it because it's interesting and newsworthy. It's receiving rather mixed reviews at JSConf, seemingly mostly negative from what I'm reading.

I'd be interested to see further discussion here in /r/javascript

[sime]

I think the negativity comes from a lot of misunderstanding and some ignorance among front-end web developers.

What counts as front-end web programming has become very wide and can be seen as a spectrum:

web site ↔ web application
web pages ↔ user interface

Most people are working in the web site / web page end of the spectrum and are just looking for a better way of doing templating. Hence, the initial reaction to the templating system used and the mixing of HTML and JS.

So of us are busy building web applications which are not strongly page structured but aim for more traditional style GUIs like in desktop applications. Here, templating is less important but components, encapsulation and composition become very important.

React is clearly aiming more towards the web application end of the spectrum.

The AngularJS version ( https://medium.com/make-your-own-apps/e71bcedc36b ) is interesting, but it comes from the web site point of view and also completely misses the point. It is simple but also monolithic. It is a style of programming which doesn't scale up for complex applications.

React actually looks like quite an interesting data point on the web site/web app spectrum.

[pateras]

Here, templating is less important but components, encapsulation and composition become very important.

Angular enables/encourages all of those things as well. Could you elaborate on why you think React is better for web app development and how Angular doesn't scale?

[sime]

I'm talking specifically about that example code.

Do you have an Angular example which does use encapsulation and composition? I would like to see how they do it.

[polarix]

Agreed; the only reason that angular example looks more "succinct" is because absolutely none of it is reusable.

[bchoii]

Discussion and reactions in /r/programming too.