I was very surprised the first time I saw JSX when working on React code. It really felt like a bastardization of what my gut felt were good software engineering practices.
But I concluded that surely these devs and Facebook are smarter than me. Or at least, different than me. I have built plenty of interactive web applications during my career using traditional approaches. So it's not like they were able to do things with these new tools I was previously not able to do.
It's hard to convince yourself that the masses may not have all the answers (cough Docker, Kubernetes cough). So I have found that ignoring the noise until I can't do something I need is the most productive approach. Continues to work for me 20+ year into building products.
jfengel 107 days ago [-]
Interesting. My first reaction to JSX was that it was just the right thing: HTML where it needed to be HTML, and a full-fledged pre-existing programming language for the rest.
I liked it better than any templating solution. I have a strong preference for existing languages over new ones. They have debuggers, libraries, StackOverflow answers, developer bases, etc.
It takes a while to fully understand the React way of doing things. But JSX itself is almost immediate: plain HTML, plus plain Javascript in braces. About the only thing you really need to learn is that you can return that "HTML" from inside the Javascript.
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But I concluded that surely these devs and Facebook are smarter than me. Or at least, different than me. I have built plenty of interactive web applications during my career using traditional approaches. So it's not like they were able to do things with these new tools I was previously not able to do.
It's hard to convince yourself that the masses may not have all the answers (cough Docker, Kubernetes cough). So I have found that ignoring the noise until I can't do something I need is the most productive approach. Continues to work for me 20+ year into building products.
I liked it better than any templating solution. I have a strong preference for existing languages over new ones. They have debuggers, libraries, StackOverflow answers, developer bases, etc.
It takes a while to fully understand the React way of doing things. But JSX itself is almost immediate: plain HTML, plus plain Javascript in braces. About the only thing you really need to learn is that you can return that "HTML" from inside the Javascript.