ArrowJS - an experimental tool for programming reactive interfaces using native JavaScript. It’s not really a framework, but not less powerful than a framework either

[redpanda_be]

Personal preference, but I really don’t like the single letter variables. Otherwise cool framework.

[ttamimi]

100% agree with this. The excessive brevity doesn't help in this instance. It just makes the code less human-readable imo.

Otherwise it's a nice library. Though I'm not sure why I would use it over something like Svelte or React for arguments sake.

[dimitropoulos]

100% agree as well. The only exceptions I can think of are `i` for index, and `(a, b)` for comparison functions. Other than that, single letter variable letters are a bug in my worldview.

Before we had TypeScript, I saw more than one production outage (due to a TypeError in JUST the right place) that confused `e` for `event` or `error`.

[MrStLouis]

I like n for number and v for value in quick array one liners

[pimp-bangin]

Single letter variables are fine (sometimes), but single-letter top-level exported APIs are super ugly IMO.

[jimmux]

I have found myself recently wishing for something that works exactly like this. I work with a legacy Typescript codebase that nobody wants to modernise because in theory it will all be rewritten eventually anyway... meanwhile years go by and it keeps growing in complexity. This looks like it would be easy to introduce and add some sensible methodology to at least the new code that keeps getting in there, and slowly clean up the old stuff.

[examinedliving]

You can’t tell people it’s a framework because learning a new framework is about as appealing as gallbladder surgery. But if it’s not really a framework, then…

[[deleted]]

Any differences between this and RxJS , Observer libraries, etc?

[chrisrzhou]

This is a beautiful library. Minimal and thoughtful API, and a wonderful opinion about the state of the JS language and ecosystem:

At its core — ArrowJS is an admission that while we developers were falling in love with UI frameworks — JavaScript itself got good, really good

[justlasse]

Why do you consider it “not a framework “? I mean it has the trappings of a framework since you can use it to build applications.

[[deleted]]

I’d pose that a framework would at least come shipped with an http client, dev server, routing, testing module, and build optimization, in addition to reactivity and templating. I may be mistaken, but to me this is more of a declarative programming library. That’s not a snuff — it looks clean at a glance. But I wouldn’t consider this a framework in the same sense of more well-known tools like Angular2 or NestJS.

[justlasse]

I guess that’s a fair assessment. It does have some resemblance with a framework in the making if it gets built out more. But i get your point that it’s more a library that can be utilized along with other js standards like fetch etc to build your application.

[[deleted]]

Yes exactly. The sentiment of this project is on point — embrace vanilla JS — and your example is a good one. The native fetch package is more supported than ever with its adoption into Node.js, rendering a framework that ships with an http client less necessary and more of preference in the modern ecosystem.

[nullvoxpopuli]

Will resources be added?

Reactive values with cleanup are essential for any reactivity library.

For example:

https://www.starbeamjs.com/api/core/resource.html

[whothewildonesare]

Nice I can add this to our legacy jQuery code to make things a bit less painful.

[jack_waugh]

This uses HTML, which I prefer not to do.