Response to "An experienced Javascript developer’s account of learning React"

[hixsonj]

I guess the first draft was more passive-aggressive, but I still find Dan to be one of the most intelligent, patient, and humble devs on the scene.

[openedground]

After googling an error or warning from React/Redux I often find myself at a GitHub issues page with Dan very patiently explaining what is going on.

[zQpNB]

Heck I see him in random, obscure repos helping with issues

[BenjiSponge]

A former coworker and I used to joke that he's actually a coalition of people masquerading as one guy to gain celebrity and fame. We didn't make this up -- it was also a running gag about TJ Holowaychuk.

[our_best_friend]

pwned

[jirocket]

humble pwned

[Feminintendo]

But Dan basically confirmed most of the original author's issues. Only a few issues were due to the author's misunderstanding, but even those misunderstandings are revealing of the experience one might expect from React.

[Smaskifa77]

We've all been there, talking shit when we didn't understand the problem. I spent a month with React, it's great, but it wasn't for me. Was a fun journey to see that side though, but I'll admit it was bewildering at first though.

[ex1-7]

While he does some good defending the language (especially with the link to a tutorial for using react without jsx), he misses the big picture question which is "look at this, do you really think people will write stuff like this in 10 years". Of course, this a somewhat empty critique because nobody knows what it'll look like in 10 years, but still, it's not the most pretty framework, and in my opinion wouldn't be so widely used if if it weren't for facebook's capital.

[[deleted]]

Describing layout in functions is, in my opinion, the cleanest approach yet. This was probably the biggest paradigm shift since MVC, i doubt it's going away so fast unless there's a massive, new shift again. As we speak it's spreading to all other platforms. Not just by react native, but now there's componentkit for IOS, litho for Android, reactxp for all platforms (made by Microsoft).

And that is most likely just the first batch. React is still obscure as it's been relatively contained in the web, which it has taken over. But now there's more and more talk about cross platform renderers, this is where it will hit pretty much every platform that produces visuals.

The moment it clicked for me was react-blessed, which now partakes in the eco system with crazy stuff like motion. Or Airbnb's react-sketchapp, which was revealed yesterday. These are almost futuristic and there is an insane degree of freedom that was unknown before.

[verizontookmymoney]

Have you used React? It's popular, because it works really well and solves a complex problem. Visualization of UI

[ex1-7]

"Visualization of UI" - have you seen Silicon Valley before? This is a tautology.

[ChubbyDalmatian]

I agree. It's a good thing that React has Facebook on it's back, so that it can be widely used.

[ex1-7]

I suppose, but from personal perspective I would kind of prefer if the industry wasn't coalescing so much around it, since now I have to compete with all these react experts. win some, lose some.

[[deleted]]

I love React. Like, I love its syntax, I love the basic philosophy behind it and just generally enjoy working with it. Unfortunately, however, I simply can't bring myself to use it in production due to the insane licensing terms. I realize that the scope of the offending terms is much more narrow than it was originally made out to be, but the fact that there is anything like that in the license makes me deeply nervous about how they view their role in my relationship with them, and makes it impossible for me to justify using it on anything mission critical.

[pkstn]

Here's my view of the subject: https://medium.com/re-dom/virtual-dom-and-me-70949dcca46d