[sdegutis]

React is intended to be a view-only library but in practice people shove all their business logic in there, mostly because React makes it incredibly hard to do anything else. Because of this, innovations in React are going in the wrong direction. This Hooks feature is meant to solve a portion of this, but it's going in the wrong direction.

A better bigger-picture innovation would be to have a React-alike that is actually only the view layer, and makes it significantly easier to write your business logic using plain old JavaScript functions/classes.

Ideally it would have an API that encourages you to write your business logic as a hierarchy of state machines, because that's what apps really are. But the state management should definitely be done outside React, similar to what Redux has done, where your actual state is transformed into props and passed into React.

Also, screw you HN for always penalizing my account so that my content shows up at the bottom instead of the top and has no chance of being seen. My content is good, your algorithms suck.

[dstroot]

> React is intended to be a view-only library but in practice people shove all their business logic in there, mostly because React makes it incredibly hard to do anything else. Because of this, innovations in React are going in the wrong direction. This Hooks feature is meant to solve a portion of this, but it's going in the wrong direction. A better bigger-picture innovation would be to have a React-alike that is actually only the view layer, and makes it significantly easier to write your business logic using plain old JavaScript functions/classes.

This. This is spot-on IMHO.

[tracker1]

You can literally use React for JUST the view layer... you don't have to maintain any state inside react if you don't want to. Early on, many did use it for just a view layer.

[AlexCoventry]

> in practice people shove all their business logic in there, mostly because React makes it incredibly hard to do anything else.

I'm not an expert by any means, but I wrote a fairly substantial react app recently, and I found that redux not only made this straightforward, but made it hard to do anything else. I did have to learn redux and redux- saga on top of react, but it wasn't hard.

[Aeolun]

Just a FUCK-TON of boilerplate :P

[AlexCoventry]

You say boilerplate, I say simple declarative layout of the boundaries between UI, state and state transitions. :-)

[acemarke]

People use the word "boilerplate" a lot, but everyone seems to have something different in mind when they say it. What specific concerns do _you_ have? I'm a Redux maintainer, and I'm always happy to try to help offer possible solutions.

[Aeolun]

I don’t really think there is a way around it if you go with the action/reducer/saga model.

I enjoy my code fairly explicit, so writing a button click that invokes some request has me writing:

- A click handler

- 3 new action name consts (request, success, failure)

- An action instantiation function that takes the necessary arguments for request.

- A saga function that catches these request actions, runs a request, and invokes the success action/failure action depending

- 3 handlers in my reducers. One for every action.

It all adds up if you have a ton of buttons :P

[acemarke]

Sagas are a great power tool, but I personally wouldn't use them for most simple API requests, largely because of the need for "signal actions" to trigger the logic.

You might want to check out our new `redux-starter-kit` package [0], which can simplify some common use cases for things like action creators and reducers. There's also many other existing libraries to handle repetitive code like API requests as well [1].

[0] https://github.com/reduxjs/redux-starter-kit

[1] https://github.com/markerikson/redux-ecosystem-links/blob/ma... , https://github.com/markerikson/redux-ecosystem-links/blob/ma...

[Aeolun]

I think you need to use sagas for either all your logic, or none of it. Having it half/half just means you’re always searching for where something is located.

That said, thanks for the recommendations! I’ll check them out.

[sdegutis]

This is exactly the thing we need fixed. I get that Angular has one way of doing it, but I still feel like it's going in the wrong direction (too Java-like).

[pier25]

I agree. I feel using JSX for example to define application routes (a la react-router) or do any other type of non view logic is just wrong.

[tracker1]

Well, you usually have more than one layer of state... a holistic application state, and a control/component state.

It's possible to completely separate out your state machine and use it separately from rendering... It's also possible to integrate it all. Best practices are generally somewhere in between and having your state where needed... if it can be contained, contain it... if multiple controls need it, globalize/context it.

[boubiyeah]

React was never a view-only library.

Pete Hunt always said he saw React components as mini MVC modules.

it's even less true nowadays with features like Context or suspense to supplement the component states. Redux was kind of a temporary hack.

[sdegutis]

I distinctly remember the phrase "V in MVC" being prominently displayed somewhere on the official React website(s).

Found it: https://web.archive.org/web/20140329114924/http://facebook.g...

> JUST THE UI

> Lots of people use React as the V in MVC. Since React makes no assumptions about the rest of your technology stack, it's easy to try it out on a small feature in an existing project.

So I was mistaken. It didn't say that's what it's only intended for, but that's what many people use it for.

Either way, it's not great at the M or C parts of MVC. Context does very little to ease that pain. Redux was more manageable but also overly complex, but it's only React's design that forced it to be so complex.

[boubiyeah]

But managing state is quite hard in general. Angular proudly advertises it solves all problems you can have on the frontend but I would take react state + utils over angular's magic templates, rxjs and bindings any day.

[sdegutis]

Right, and that's what I'm recommending we in general try to innovate on: better state management than React, but with the ease of writing view components that React has showed works well. Since the view is hierarchical, it makes sense for components to inherently also be hierarchical, but business logic often doesn't match up to React's component hierarchy, so it should not be done inside React or tied to React's hierarchy.

[jf-]

Out of curiosity, have you actually tried the latest version of Angular to see if your preference does hold up? It’s come quite a way since the bad old days.

[tracker1]

I can't speak for GP, but have used angular up through 4.x (not quite current) and don't find it better than React's ecosystem imho.

With React I can often bring in additional components and libraries without friction. With Angular it feels like doing anything means significant friction. And heaven help you if you want to change the way something internal works, or work around things.

[jf-]

I can’t say I’ve had that much trouble bringing in third party libraries, nor have I had a need to change how the framework works internally. I think this is the same as with most frameworks, you tend to just use them rather than doing stuff under the hood. Can you give an example?