5 ms·

The crowd goes mild.

omeid2 8y ago
The crowd is too fatigued to get excited anymore, there is a handful of outspoken people who will cheer any change for the sake of change or saving up a couple of key strokes at the cost of long term API size and maintenance burden. but it is getting tiresome.
geezerjay 8y ago
I don't know what is there to cheer about the introduction of a feature that offers nothing new.
- joesb 8y ago
  Hooks offers nothing new over HoC and FaC the same way React offered nothing new over jQuery and EmberJS.
  - omeid2 8y ago
    That is being unfair to React. React changed the way developers reason about UI/DOM from imperative to declarative, the holy grail here is that a declarative API allows you to move up your state and have a "single source of truth" and so makes it easy to reason about your application's state at the cost of having more plumbing, for example consider incriminating the value of an input with jQuery (imperative) vs React (generally with Redux). What Hooks does is move the component's state management from components root a level deeper into hook functions and advocates for reusable state management functions that manages various fragments of your component's state, this I believe is a step backwards in terms of simplifying how you reason about state management in terms of complexity --not lines of code. I am just not sure if this abstraction is worth it in practice and a good step for React.
    - the_duke 8y ago
      You misunderstood the parent.
      - omeid2 8y ago
        I got the sarcasm, but comparing what Hooks brings to table to what React did is unfair. Hooks are moving around state management, React was a paradigm change.
  - pluma 8y ago
    You're being sarcastic but there are enough people around who wouldn't see that at face value.
  - geezerjay 8y ago
    > Hooks offers nothing new over HoC and FaC You've missed the point entirely. Hooks offer nothing new because their functionality was already implemented in React class components. They literally add no functionality to React. The docs actually state quite clearly that developers are discouraged from replacing class components with function components.
    - Vinnl 8y ago
      "No new functionality" and "nothing new" are two different things. Improved developer experience, decreasing the surface area of bugs, etc - all examples of definite improvements that are not technically new functionality.
    - joesb 8y ago
      And what do you think React can do that jQuery cannot? Heck, what do you think React can do that standard HTML5/JS API cannot do? React doesn't offer new functionality to do UI. It offer new ways to think about the problem. Hooks doesn't offer any new functionality over `this.state` and component life cycle, it offser new way to think about the problem.
      - geezerjay 8y ago
        > And what do you think React can do that jQuery cannot? Again, you've missed the point.
    - alangpierce 8y ago
      > The docs actually state quite clearly that developers are discouraged from replacing class components with function components. Could you link to where it says this? My understanding is that hooks are intended to be the new best practice, and ideally all code would use hooks (which the React team believes are overall better than class components), but the React team doesn't want to force migration pain on everyone. So as I understand it, it's not that a class -> hook refactor is "discouraged", it's more "don't let this be too much of a distraction, and don't feel obligated to rewrite old code".
    - mambodog 8y ago
pluma 8y ago
Nah, HN is jaded as usual but every React dev I've talked to outside HN has been looking forward to this day with excitement ever since hooks landed in alpha. I've yet to see HN get truly excited about anything JS-related, particularly React. Personally I'm excited but I wouldn't bother elaborating my excitement here because I know I'll just attract the usual crowd making unfound assumptions about my experience or complaining about hooks not following best practices (like, I don't know, JSX?).
- barryhoodlum 8y ago
  Yes, it gets a bit tedious seeing 90% of comments on HN being from people who clearly haven't tried the thing, or even given it any thought or consideration beyond an initial "this is not familiar to me so therefore bad!" kneejerk reaction. It's not a great look for a developer and I don't know why they seem so proud of their close-minded attitude.
  - genezeta 8y ago
    Yes, it gets a bit tedious seeing 90% of comments from React fanboys being from people who clearly just repeat each others arguments, or even give no argument at all beyond "I'm assuming you are stupid because people who are not clearly all love this feature". It's not a great look for a developer and I don't know why they seem so proud of their close-minded attitude.
    - barryhoodlum 8y ago
      I said nothing about loving, or even liking, hooks or React itself. That's not the point. It's weighing in with a completely useless opinion based on a second's thought, over and over again. There are trade offs and it's interesting to discuss those and to criticise them. But a kneejerk reaction can't go that far.
    - pluma 8y ago
      This is basically the NPC meme but for technologies instead of politics. I've been building websites since the 1990s and web applications since the mid-2000s. I've used a wide range of web technologies and despite being "self-taught" went out of my way to broaden my horizon beyond the imminently useful. My initial reaction to JSX was dismissive ridicule: "XML in JS? Yeah, because that worked out so well when we did that in ActionScript. And building your own component tree as a template language was already a bad idea when I rolled my own implementation in PHP fifteen years ago". My initial reaction to hooks was confusion: "The sequence is important? Why wouldn't you just name things instead? Why does everything start with "use"? What the heck is even going on?" Both times I looked into it and realised I was wrong and my intuition was just rejection of the unfamiliar and a profound misunderstanding of how the technology I was dismissing actually works. I'm not a "React fanboy". I can't say what framework I'll be using five or ten years from now. It doesn't look like there's anything around that I would choose to replace it (though I have to admit Vue is a contender if only because it seems more beginner-friendly) but I've gone through enough technologies all over the stack not to make the foolish assumption that the things I use today will be the things I use in the future. I was confused by hooks, so I paid close attention to the demos and explanations. I learned how they work and why they have the limitations they explicitly tell you to be aware of. That's when I got truly excited. Not because I was dazzled but because I saw the potential and understood how they compared to what I am already using. Stoic sarcasm went out of style in the 90s. Maybe you should give empathy a try. Maybe, just maybe, some of the people who are truly enthusiastic about hooks aren't simply naive, maybe some are enthusiastic because they do understand how hooks work and what implications they have.

The crowd is too fatigued to get excited anymore, there is a handful of outspoken people who will cheer any change for the sake of change or saving up a couple of key strokes at the cost of long term API size and maintenance burden. but it is getting tiresome.

geezerjay 8y ago

I don't know what is there to cheer about the introduction of a feature that offers nothing new.

joesb 8y ago
Hooks offers nothing new over HoC and FaC the same way React offered nothing new over jQuery and EmberJS.
- omeid2 8y ago
  That is being unfair to React. React changed the way developers reason about UI/DOM from imperative to declarative, the holy grail here is that a declarative API allows you to move up your state and have a "single source of truth" and so makes it easy to reason about your application's state at the cost of having more plumbing, for example consider incriminating the value of an input with jQuery (imperative) vs React (generally with Redux). What Hooks does is move the component's state management from components root a level deeper into hook functions and advocates for reusable state management functions that manages various fragments of your component's state, this I believe is a step backwards in terms of simplifying how you reason about state management in terms of complexity --not lines of code. I am just not sure if this abstraction is worth it in practice and a good step for React.
  - the_duke 8y ago
    You misunderstood the parent.
    - omeid2 8y ago
      I got the sarcasm, but comparing what Hooks brings to table to what React did is unfair. Hooks are moving around state management, React was a paradigm change.
- pluma 8y ago
  You're being sarcastic but there are enough people around who wouldn't see that at face value.
- geezerjay 8y ago
  > Hooks offers nothing new over HoC and FaC You've missed the point entirely. Hooks offer nothing new because their functionality was already implemented in React class components. They literally add no functionality to React. The docs actually state quite clearly that developers are discouraged from replacing class components with function components.
  - Vinnl 8y ago
    "No new functionality" and "nothing new" are two different things. Improved developer experience, decreasing the surface area of bugs, etc - all examples of definite improvements that are not technically new functionality.
  - joesb 8y ago
    And what do you think React can do that jQuery cannot? Heck, what do you think React can do that standard HTML5/JS API cannot do? React doesn't offer new functionality to do UI. It offer new ways to think about the problem. Hooks doesn't offer any new functionality over `this.state` and component life cycle, it offser new way to think about the problem.
    - geezerjay 8y ago
      > And what do you think React can do that jQuery cannot? Again, you've missed the point.
  - alangpierce 8y ago
    > The docs actually state quite clearly that developers are discouraged from replacing class components with function components. Could you link to where it says this? My understanding is that hooks are intended to be the new best practice, and ideally all code would use hooks (which the React team believes are overall better than class components), but the React team doesn't want to force migration pain on everyone. So as I understand it, it's not that a class -> hook refactor is "discouraged", it's more "don't let this be too much of a distraction, and don't feel obligated to rewrite old code".
  - mambodog 8y ago

pluma 8y ago

Nah, HN is jaded as usual but every React dev I've talked to outside HN has been looking forward to this day with excitement ever since hooks landed in alpha. I've yet to see HN get truly excited about anything JS-related, particularly React. Personally I'm excited but I wouldn't bother elaborating my excitement here because I know I'll just attract the usual crowd making unfound assumptions about my experience or complaining about hooks not following best practices (like, I don't know, JSX?).

barryhoodlum 8y ago
Yes, it gets a bit tedious seeing 90% of comments on HN being from people who clearly haven't tried the thing, or even given it any thought or consideration beyond an initial "this is not familiar to me so therefore bad!" kneejerk reaction. It's not a great look for a developer and I don't know why they seem so proud of their close-minded attitude.
- genezeta 8y ago
  Yes, it gets a bit tedious seeing 90% of comments from React fanboys being from people who clearly just repeat each others arguments, or even give no argument at all beyond "I'm assuming you are stupid because people who are not clearly all love this feature". It's not a great look for a developer and I don't know why they seem so proud of their close-minded attitude.
  - barryhoodlum 8y ago
    I said nothing about loving, or even liking, hooks or React itself. That's not the point. It's weighing in with a completely useless opinion based on a second's thought, over and over again. There are trade offs and it's interesting to discuss those and to criticise them. But a kneejerk reaction can't go that far.
  - pluma 8y ago
    This is basically the NPC meme but for technologies instead of politics. I've been building websites since the 1990s and web applications since the mid-2000s. I've used a wide range of web technologies and despite being "self-taught" went out of my way to broaden my horizon beyond the imminently useful. My initial reaction to JSX was dismissive ridicule: "XML in JS? Yeah, because that worked out so well when we did that in ActionScript. And building your own component tree as a template language was already a bad idea when I rolled my own implementation in PHP fifteen years ago". My initial reaction to hooks was confusion: "The sequence is important? Why wouldn't you just name things instead? Why does everything start with "use"? What the heck is even going on?" Both times I looked into it and realised I was wrong and my intuition was just rejection of the unfamiliar and a profound misunderstanding of how the technology I was dismissing actually works. I'm not a "React fanboy". I can't say what framework I'll be using five or ten years from now. It doesn't look like there's anything around that I would choose to replace it (though I have to admit Vue is a contender if only because it seems more beginner-friendly) but I've gone through enough technologies all over the stack not to make the foolish assumption that the things I use today will be the things I use in the future. I was confused by hooks, so I paid close attention to the demos and explanations. I learned how they work and why they have the limitations they explicitly tell you to be aware of. That's when I got truly excited. Not because I was dazzled but because I saw the potential and understood how they compared to what I am already using. Stoic sarcasm went out of style in the 90s. Maybe you should give empathy a try. Maybe, just maybe, some of the people who are truly enthusiastic about hooks aren't simply naive, maybe some are enthusiastic because they do understand how hooks work and what implications they have.