As the view counter started to exceed my expectations I thought there would be a fair amount of negative feedback. I was surprised that there wasn't much. Turns out that it's all here on HN! :P
First off, I can't believe all of you actually read that. You have both my sympathy and thanks. Even more thanks for commenting on it.
I want to address a few of the points brought up in the comments.
1| Yes the title is click bait. The title is the initial hook to the reader (and often the only thing you'll see before deciding to check it out). So by definition it is click bait lol It is also true.
2| The post wasn't intended to say JSX is bad or that you should use hyperscript (although I do think you should try it). It is an account of my decision to investigate hyperscript and some reasons why I chose to stick with it.
Each team and project is different and I am not so assured of my opinion to say that you should use hyperscript. I've seen some who genuinely prefer React.createElement. I've seen react-jade also brought up today. If there is a view abstraction that you like better then you should use it.
3| Yeah, the argument I present for why I implemented hyperscript may seem rather thin. For my team, however, it was not.
4| Despite the fact that we often talk about React and JSX in the same sentence they are not synonymous (see the "use the one you like" argument above). JSX does take some setting up to use. And you'd be surprised how often I field questions about the JSX transformer even though it was deprecated nearly a year ago...
5| The RTFM argument. If you knew the developers on my team they could tell you that I tell them to RTFM several times a day. I think it is very important for them to consult the docs whenever they have a question instead of me. That being said, I'd rather them RTFM about immutable-js or functional combinators than view syntax.
I started reading with skepticism and you hadn't convinced me by the end that you were any more or less "correct" than my own approach. That being said, I never for a second thought you were wrong and needed correcting either. Your tone never implied to me that the you thought anything similar about the reader either. Your responses in the comments on Medium basically confirmed in my mind that you were just talking to the void about what has worked for you and your team.
1| Don't let anyone bother you about headlines that attract readers and healthy conversation. Despite the romantic notions we may harbor about writing, it is an attention game for most who do it. Good headlines are a part of that game.
Kudos on handling the unexpected attention well :).
FWIW my comment also blew up more than I woulda expected. I wasn't really responding to your article even, more to Andre's flavor over the top anti-JSX attitude. It's like you said: each team is different and should use what works for them, and making overblown arguments doesn't help that.
If I can double down on the mistake though, I'd be concerned if someone who didn't feel like learning how JSX works tried to dive into immmutables and combinators :D.
Thanks for react-hyperscript-helpers! Feels like react-native in a good way.
To a certain extent I think Andre's arguments suffer from being 140 chars or less. Seems like he's yelling probably more than he is. And since he brings it up at least once a month I can understand if there is a bit of eyeroll.
Haha, fair enough. Something that I didn't mention but I suppose bears noting, I have, not so secretly, been moving the organization I work for towards elm. hyperscript is much more akin to elm-html than JSX is, and is one of the "comfort level" stepping stones in that effort (along with immutable data structures, combinators, pure functions, etc). While the things I mention in the article were my primary motivators, I'd be lying if I said the above wasn't a factor too.
As the view counter started to exceed my expectations I thought there would be a fair amount of negative feedback. I was surprised that there wasn't much. Turns out that it's all here on HN! :P
First off, I can't believe all of you actually read that. You have both my sympathy and thanks. Even more thanks for commenting on it.
I want to address a few of the points brought up in the comments.
1| Yes the title is click bait. The title is the initial hook to the reader (and often the only thing you'll see before deciding to check it out). So by definition it is click bait lol It is also true.
2| The post wasn't intended to say JSX is bad or that you should use hyperscript (although I do think you should try it). It is an account of my decision to investigate hyperscript and some reasons why I chose to stick with it.
Each team and project is different and I am not so assured of my opinion to say that you should use hyperscript. I've seen some who genuinely prefer React.createElement. I've seen react-jade also brought up today. If there is a view abstraction that you like better then you should use it.
3| Yeah, the argument I present for why I implemented hyperscript may seem rather thin. For my team, however, it was not.
4| Despite the fact that we often talk about React and JSX in the same sentence they are not synonymous (see the "use the one you like" argument above). JSX does take some setting up to use. And you'd be surprised how often I field questions about the JSX transformer even though it was deprecated nearly a year ago...
5| The RTFM argument. If you knew the developers on my team they could tell you that I tell them to RTFM several times a day. I think it is very important for them to consult the docs whenever they have a question instead of me. That being said, I'd rather them RTFM about immutable-js or functional combinators than view syntax.
If you've got more heat lay it on :)