alt Hacker NewsIt is interesting, but I really dislike the way it tries to bash every other tech in the blog post, on the homepage and in the docs itself. The tone is very confident, but it will put you open to a lot of scrutiny.
Instead it could really use a lot more explanation on how it works. If you make comparisons make sure they are fair. The image "JavaScript mixed together" and "Strict separation of concerns" is just comparing apples with oranges. Multiple times in the docs it compares a huge complicated JSX like component and replaces it with 3 lines of html and 3 lines of css. I don't believe that it does the same thing.
Some of the claims are strange. It praises standard HTML but apparently you have to use some custom Markdown syntax to write it. How does that add up? And on top of that it also introduces new syntax for loops and variables.
This could all work perfectly fine. But my suggestion would be to talk more about how it works and what are the advantages and less trying to bring down competitors. It could use less grand claims and focus more on what it really does.
Replies
I think all of their criticism of the current web ecosystem is valid... And I'd rather have someone take a big swing than marginally improve the React ecosystem.
> "JavaScript mixed together" and "Strict separation of concerns" is just comparing apples with oranges
I feel this this comparison reveals how deeply framework thinking has shaped our understanding of web development and how thoroughly we've accepted JavaScript monoliths as normal.
Why have we normalized a world where marketing pages need a JavaScript monolith with mixed content? Why do we consider utility classes more "maintainable" than systematic design? Why must every solution flow through JavaScript when browsers provide these capabilities natively?
I have tremendous troubles explaining these things to engineers, who constantly turn the discussion into technical, low-level details instead of looking at the bigger picture. Any suggestions how I should approach this? Thanks in advance!
Yeah there is a lot of idealism in the project - problem is reality doesn’t care about your idea of separation of concerns and most likely your web applications will not benefit from it.
What I mean React and other frameworks went with mixing concerns because of reasons that were practical - for example realization that usually one dev implements HTML and JS code in one task, not like article comes up with designers and devs. In reality lots of designers don’t live in agile sprints and the same repositories as devs there is huge impedance mismatch.
> it could really use a lot more explanation on how it works
How Nue works is _extensively_ documented:
Most of these questions are also addressed in the FAQ:
https://nuejs.org/docs/faq.html
THe Markdown claim is also explained multiple times on this discussion
> Multiple times in the docs it compares a huge complicated JSX like component and replaces it with 3 lines of html and 3 lines of css.
I've seen my fair share of React code, and the code he is displaying is definitely idiomatic React.
> It could use less grand claims and focus more on what it really does.
Agreed. While I appreciate that a rationale is needed for something like this, I think his presentation of the rationale was far too verbose compared to diving into some code.
Maybe I'm not the target - I would have preferred more code and less pontificating, because I 'noped right out of React and others. What I have as a replacement in standard JS, HTML and CSS is unsatisfying to me.