S

This article never mentions React. This has nothing to do with React. There's a reason people say "react is not reactive"[1]. Signals are derived from Observables[2] which were first used in Adam Haile's S.JS[2] and made popular in JavaScriptLand by Ryan Carniato's SolidJS[3]. [1] - https://dev.to/this-is-learning/how-react-isn-t-reactive-and... [2] - https://dev.to/this-is-learning/the-evolution-of-signals-in-... [3] - https://www.solidjs.com/ [4] - https://github.com/adamhaile/S

Also shoutout to Solid's inspiration, S.js[0]. [0]: https://github.com/adamhaile/S

Related is S.js: https://github.com/adamhaile/s I love signals. I prefer them when making UIs over any other primitive (besides, perhaps, the cassowary constraint algorithm). I try to replicate them in every language I use, just for fun. I also don't believe they belong in the Javascript language whatsoever. Let the language be for a while, people already struggle to keep up with it. TC-39 is already scaring away people from the language.

"Signal" has been used in FRP circles for some time [1,2]. The original FRP stuff was events/signals and behaviours. But I agree that JS didn't use this terminology until more recently. S.js is maybe one of the earlier ones, but that was still over 8 years ago. [1] https://scholarworks.rit.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=651... [2] https://github.com/14427/signal [3] https://github.com/adamhaile/S/tree/e897ec1212a073bb1fe695e1...

So... S.js[0]? https://GitHub.com/adamhaile/s

Cool! This reminds me of S.js [0] which I've used a decent amount to great effect, but it seems about half the size. I'll have to look at how they compare (though if someone knows off the top of their head that'd be appreciated). S.js is nice because it has a helper library (surplus) for dom things. [0]: https://github.com/adamhaile/S

I've been out of the React game for a while, and this is the first I've read about Hooks (or at least the first time I read enough to look into them). If I understand things correctly, they are automatic dependency tracking functions that will rerun as needed? Kinda like S.js [1]? Though that's different in that it's built around only that functionality, not integrated into a larger system. [1]: https://github.com/adamhaile/S

Hooks are nothing new, it's just repackaging of https://github.com/dominictarr/observable https://github.com/adamhaile/S Mobx and Vue use the same technique for running computeds. As does Solid and Sinuous, etc...

This is what I use when I need to do very minimalistic UI and feel that bringing Vue/React is an overkill https://github.com/adamhaile/S - reactivity without DOM superglue to it.

Has anyone checked out the linked framework benchmark[0], and some of the other frameworks linked in there? I had not heard of surplus and S.js before, but they look like an interesting combo[1][2]. Their reasoning for why surplus uses real dom nodes seems pretty solid[3]. My oversimplified TL;DR: a virtual DOM mainly solves the problem of JavaScript not being reactive; the DOM already is. So if you have an efficient general solution for adding reactivity to JS, the need for a virtual DOM is reduced as well, and removing it then saves on the performance / complexity / interop overhead that it would add. And S.js looks like pretty sweet reactivity library, even without surplus - lots of fine-grained control options too. [0] https://github.com/krausest/js-framework-benchmark [1] https://github.com/adamhaile/surplus [2] https://github.com/ad