[Saaster]

I feel that with class components I have a really good understanding of what is rendering and most importantly, when. componentDidMount, shouldComponentUpdate, PureComponent, etc. With hooks, it's much more magic. And clarity of rendering is literally the one thing I want from React.

We have two projects, one using class components and one using hooks, and working on the class components one is unexciting, straightforward, sometimes repetitious, but never confusing. When writing hooks on the other hand it's constant gotchas; can't do that here, didn't memoize this, can't call that within this, etc. fuzzing until it works as Reacts expects. And then the bloody thing still renders on every frame. Back to the drawing board to figure out the right magic incantation. Probably memoize a few more layers, ugh.

[andrewingram]

It's a bit of a trope by now, but there is a lot of truth in the common argument that if converting your class component to hooks makes it feel more complicated, you probably had subtle bugs in your class component -- usually an edge case you hadn't bothered to handle. The main quirk of hooks is that it makes problems in your components a lot more visible. I don't view this as a bad thing, but I totally get that it's frustrating.

[throwaway286]

This is how I feel too, and I'm a confused how the reaction to hooks is so overwhelmingly positive. I find it quite strange that we need to set up an eslint rule to make sure our function arguments are correct, and it will automatically fill them out if we don't. And I need to memoize so many things! I feel like I'm not even writing javascript anymore.

[JMTQp8lwXL]

This is the most legitimate criticism I've seen in the discussion. Hooks give you more control. 'useEffect' will only re-run when any value in the dependency array is updated. In class syntax, you have 'componentDidUpdate', but that function gets called after any prop or state change. With hooks, there is more granularity. Personally, I've found reasoning about hooks to be a learning curve that was conquerable in about a week. But there is no arguing, it requires you to mentally reason a little bit further than the blunt 'componentDidUpdate'.

[pacala]

Memoization is getting me too. I end up memoizing everything, which is more verbose than I'd like. Perhaps we're missing some obvious pattern?

[hombre_fatal]

Though note that React.memo(Component) gives you the same behavior as React.PureComponent which is what people were tending to default to anyways.

[Toine]

You have my vote for the best criticism of hooks in comments.