Re:React is a fractal of bad design
by mattigames on Wednesday March 08, 2023 @02:17AM
(#35066169)
"Doesn't reinvent the wheel" they literally created a whole new language called JSX, I have 13 years writing JS and I dislike React and JSX is one of the reasons. As far I can tell reason it's picked a lot of times now it's market share, people see that is more popular than the competition so they try to learn it, creating a feedback loop that just makes it more popular.
[ Parent
| on HN ]
JSX has been around for 7 or so years... that's a good amount of time. Over half of your 13 years :)
Do you avoid JSX when using Vue or other libraries that support JSX? Are you invoking the library function directly - React.createElement or vue's equivalent instead?
Vue supports JSX, but it is by no means the default. https://vuejs.org/guide/extras/render-function.html
Re:React is a fractal of bad design
by mattigames on Wednesday March 08, 2023 @10:23AM
(#35070103)
Yes I do, the only language I use for my personal projects is Typescript; I think JSX, .vue, .svelte they are all a mistake, JS is more than enough if you really need to use it to compose html.
div('#wrapper',
div('.container',
span('.big', `It's not that hard`),
button('.red', {route: home}, 'Home!')
)
)You should give Clojurescript a serious look. You can use that approach, but the resulting code is... well, readable.
Re:React is a fractal of bad design
by mattigames on Wednesday March 08, 2023 @05:54PM
(#35075923)
There is nothing readable about JSX, "<" will always mean minus-than and ">" will always be greater-than.
Re:React is a fractal of bad design
by pcthrowaway on Wednesday March 08, 2023 @03:34AM
(#35066660)
I actually like JSX a lot, but I'm baffled when people act like the very thin DSL used by svelte is any more unapproachable than JSX, or like JSX is somehow more javascript when it's a mish-mash of extended HTML (don't forget to use key as needed, and className), React components, and JS (expressions only, not statements... and weird-looking ones at that)
> don't forget to use key as needed, and className
Those are part of React, not JSX itself. Compare Vue's use of JSX, for example, which just uses `class` and `for` instead of `className` and `htmlFor`.
React just went for JS naming of the attributes instead of html naming of the attributes. Reasonable, if annoying, choice.
Re:React is a fractal of bad design
by mattigames on Wednesday March 08, 2023 @08:13PM
(#35077120)
False, for a lot of attributes you have to use the HTML naming of the attributes, so is not consistent, for example to use aria-label you have to write it exactly like that (not ariaLabel as when using JS)
aria-* and data-* apparently are the exception
More on that: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/52398380/why-react-wai-a...
I recoil from svelte and such because when I see someone trying to invent an ad hoc language inside html attributes I get flashbacks to "transcluding" "directives" of Angular 2.
Re:React is a fractal of bad design
by frosted-flakes on Wednesday March 08, 2023 @01:37PM
(#35072947)
JSX is a simple transformation of nested JavaScript functions, but the custom DSLs used by other frameworks is string templating, which is kind of an inversion of how JSX works. JSX also has extremely good support in just about every editor and it supports TypeScript, which is not true of every DSL.
JSX isn't a new language, it's syntactic sugar for React.createElement() or whatever other pragma you prefer (like the Preact or Vue equivalents).
Re:React is a fractal of bad design
by mattigames on Wednesday March 08, 2023 @03:18PM
(#35074188)
Call it what you want, still is the worst kind of syntatic sugar, the one that forces me to use a transpiler but its full of footguns, like being unable to use "class" for the "class" attribute and I have to use className instead, or the one that has no syntax sugar for conditionals so instead you write horrible stuff like {isValid && isApproved && foobar && <div>...}
If you're going to call something a footgun, make sure it's an actual footgun and not simply using a different naming convention than the one you want. You want the HTML name while React uses the Javascript name.
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Element/cla...
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/HTMLLabelEl...
Re:React is a fractal of bad design
by mattigames on Wednesday March 08, 2023 @08:07PM
(#35077082)
It is a foogun because is only for a few specificic attributes (class) that it uses this specific convention, for other attributes it uses the normal HTML attributes, for example in JavaScript to add aria labels you do stuff like "ariaLabel" when using react you have to write "aria-label" instead.
Re:React is a fractal of bad design
by undefinedzero on Wednesday March 08, 2023 @07:31AM
(#35068224)
If you look at library popularity more broadly, you’ll find over longer periods of time only those people enjoy working with actually continue to grow regardless of previous momentum. People really do move on if it doesn’t work well enough for them.
Take React form libraries for example [1], redux-form used to be the most popular by far, was followed up by react-final-form from the same authors so people naturally flocked to that. But that is now clearly seeing a decline as react-hook-form, a library that started from zero, is a lot more pleasant to use.
[1] https://npmtrends.com/final-form-vs-formik-vs-react-final-fo... (set to 5 years)