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by westoncb 1572 days ago
> from mixins, to HOCs, to render props, and finally to hooks.

While each item in the series is "more functional" in some sense, the progression itself is not something reflective of some kind of standard progression of concepts or techniques within functional programming.

I'd say mixins have nothing to do with it; HOCs do in the sense that they're similar to higher-order functions (I suppose they literally are if the component is a function component); render props is pretty much purely a React concept to my knowledge, hooks I've heard described as "similar to" algebraic effects (this seems like an accessible article for more info: https://overreacted.io/algebraic-effects-for-the-rest-of-us/).

So I don't think there is any logical next step. To me it just feels like a series of individually thought out refactors, each leaving us with a system that's a bit more clean and compact than the last.

More broadly speaking though, I think any significant such changes will have the property of reducing impedance mismatch between React and some Platonic ideal of functional reactive programming (applied to html/css generation).
1 comments
deckard1 1571 days ago
> I've heard described as "similar to" algebraic effects

I wonder if there is an equivalent of the Turing tarpit, but for languages that aspire to confuse with ever-increasing relationships to tangentially-related mathematical concepts. The Church tarpit? Or would that be the Lambda tarpit...

It sounds like continuations to me. Or Common Lisp conditions/restarts. But that would be an implementation detail when talking about React hooks. And if I'm brutally honest, that all sounds like a retroactive analogy to move hooks into the territory of functional purity or relevance to FP. Better than having people realize it's all a pile of ad hoc design choices on top of JavaScript.

> So I don't think there is any logical next step.

We're already transpiling everywhere. Just get rid of JavaScript! Svelte did it. TypeScript did it. Instead of brutalizing functions, React could instead be forging a new path in language design.

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