For one thing, I just genuinely think WebComponents are a badly designed API that is weird and hard to use (how many people are using WebComponents without at least Lit, if not something much bigger?), and React is a relatively well-designed library that isn't really that bloated. There's not really much of a point in trying to argue since this is inherently subjective and people with different values are going to irreconcilably disagree. But, if you don't respect that some people hold this position, we're not going to make any progress towards a consensus.
On the note of <dialog>, I recently tried to use <dialog> in a (React) application, and it did work pretty well, but I also found that in Firefox it is only practically possible to do a fade-in animation, not a fade-out one. That isn't really a critical issue for me, it is just an animation after all, but I find it unfortunate. I also find <dialog> to be a weirdly shaped API too: I don't really hate it, but I don't love it either. It feels awkward.
I find this implicit view that developers that, for example, prefer React over WebComponents are making a suboptimal choice to be rather condescending and not really in the spirit of trying to see things from the other side. Wouldn't you want to focus on the strongest arguments and not the weakest ones? Maybe you've literally never heard anyone complain about WebComponents or Shadow DOM, but if so, I find that surprising. Certainly here on HN, I've seen a fair bit of WebComponents hate.
I do, FWIW, realize that I've particularly focused on WebComponents, which this article doesn't actually name directly. But, I assume we're not talking about ditching React to implement our own component framework on top of the traditional DOM APIs, because that's what React already does...
How would you solve that? To this day I've never seen a workable proposal.
Slots need to have a host element to select slotted nodes from. ShadowRoot provides that host. Everyone who I've seen say that it's easy comes up with an ambiguous system that doesn't work in many cases and could never be standardized.
Which is a common problem with most "web components suck" takes - they have no sympathy for standards developers or the difficulty of the problem and somehow assume the spec people are dumb or evil, and they don't do the work to show how something could realistically be better.
I don't think that standards did anything wrong or incompetent, but with hindsight considering all the complexities they bring i am hot sure they have been worth it
jchw · · focus · HN ↗
On the note of <dialog>, I recently tried to use <dialog> in a (React) application, and it did work pretty well, but I also found that in Firefox it is only practically possible to do a fade-in animation, not a fade-out one. That isn't really a critical issue for me, it is just an animation after all, but I find it unfortunate. I also find <dialog> to be a weirdly shaped API too: I don't really hate it, but I don't love it either. It feels awkward.
I find this implicit view that developers that, for example, prefer React over WebComponents are making a suboptimal choice to be rather condescending and not really in the spirit of trying to see things from the other side. Wouldn't you want to focus on the strongest arguments and not the weakest ones? Maybe you've literally never heard anyone complain about WebComponents or Shadow DOM, but if so, I find that surprising. Certainly here on HN, I've seen a fair bit of WebComponents hate.
I do, FWIW, realize that I've particularly focused on WebComponents, which this article doesn't actually name directly. But, I assume we're not talking about ditching React to implement our own component framework on top of the traditional DOM APIs, because that's what React already does...
spankalee · · focus · HN ↗
brazukadev · · focus · HN ↗
spankalee · · focus · HN ↗
Slots need to have a host element to select slotted nodes from. ShadowRoot provides that host. Everyone who I've seen say that it's easy comes up with an ambiguous system that doesn't work in many cases and could never be standardized.
Which is a common problem with most "web components suck" takes - they have no sympathy for standards developers or the difficulty of the problem and somehow assume the spec people are dumb or evil, and they don't do the work to show how something could realistically be better.
afiori · · focus · HN ↗