uibuilder

You do need frameworks, but you don't need big fat frameworks that completely change the programming model and require you to learn its own incantations, rituals and ceremony. React is one such beast. React is only useful if you need to incrementally update complex screens, because simple screens can be re-rendered completely and no one will know the difference. Very few applications need to incrementally update complex screens. If your application doesn't have this need you can use simpler technologies that don't have the same "Care and feed" requirements of React, such as UIBuilder: https://github.com/wisercoder/uibuilder BTW, this lib is a mere 200 lines. Add this 500-line router: https://github.com/edman3d/mvc-router Now you have a usable "framework" that is 700 lines long, super productive, and no incantations, rituals or ceremony.

So React added isReactComponent to Component class but the author doesn't explain why they couldn't just check for render() method. It works in this React-like library: https://github.com/wisercoder/uibuilder/blob/master/UIBuilde...

If a template engine is all you need here's the simplest: https://github.com/wisercoder/uibuilder used by apps such as https://circles.app

> HTML attributes are not great for data transfer (string serialization for everything). You can JSX (as first introduced by React) to pass objects to Web Components. See: https://github.com/wisercoder/uibuilder

>> React has become difficult to reason about Absolutely. React started off simple but with things like Redux added on, it has become unnecessarily complex. The performance benefits of React is overrated. Javascript is so fast these days that you can rerender the whole page on navigation and no one will know the difference. I built a whole social network site based on a simpler alternative, UIBuilder, and you can see for yourself that it is performant: https://circles.app UIBuilder is here: https://github.com/wisercoder/uibuilder

This might be of interest to HN community: we didn’t use React, Angular or Vue. We used https://github.com/wisercoder/uibuilder and an MVC library. Both are simple, tiny libs each no more than 500 lines of code. We don’t get the point of large js frameworks. React is overrated.

There are tiny alternatives to React that support JSX syntax. This library is better when you want to be "closer to the metal": https://github.com/wisercoder/uibuilder

Here's one that uses jQuery. See how much simpler it is? The one you found does have more functionality, but try rewriting the one I found in React without using jQuery. I guarantee it will be much more complicated. https://github.com/wisercoder/uibuilder/blob/master/SimpleDe...

You can actually leave react and still keep JSX. This tiny library lets you use JSX as a templating mechanism: https://github.com/wisercoder/uibuilder

>> If I want to pass an array of ids to a sub-component declaratively, there's not really an easy way to do it. Yes, there is. See https://github.com/wisercoder/uibuilder

>> Use template literals for templating, so you don't even need handlebars/mustache anymore. You can do better than template literals. You can use TSX, which gives you compile-time verification for tags and attributes, in addition to JavaScript expressions. See: https://github.com/wisercoder/uibuilder With TSX (which is JSX written using TypeScript, you get things like syntax coloring and indentation for tags, because HTML and JavaScript are both first-class citizens in TSX.

The benefits of React (such as its templating syntax) can be had with much simpler libraries, such as this one: https://github.com/wisercoder/uibuilder The much touted benefit of React, DOM diffing, is useful if you have a very complex screen and you need to make surgical updates. Most applications have simple screens that can be completely re-rendered and the user won't know the difference.

Not a major framework, but UIBuilder lets you use Web Components using JSX, just like React: https://github.com/wisercoder/uibuilder

You can build Web Components using JSX using this library: https://github.com/wisercoder/uibuilder (The lib is 200 lines, so it is almost the same as VanillaJS)