I guess this post is kinda old - but it popped up today in my Dev.to feed, so...
On a practical level, I've noticed that the "life cycle" of Hooks isn't completely analogous to class-based components. This has caused me some degree of headaches, and I've only recently begun using Hooks heavily. They say things in the docs like "this Hook is analogous to this lifecycle method", but, umm... not exactly. I know that part of this is just about learning the ins-and-outs of Hooks, but it can still be frustrating when you've pretty-much mastered class-based components.
On a more subjective level, I have a really hard time whenever I'm doing "Pattern X" and then someone comes along (like Dan Abramov) and says, "Yeah... that other way you're doing everything sucks - so you should do it instead with 'Pattern Y'." To be clear, I'm always open to reading/hearing about new innovations. But when I see the "innovation", I need to see some compelling reason to switch. And no, the reason can't simply be, "The Old Method is stooopid and the New Method is awesome - so use the new method." That kinda "reasoning" is a quick way to turn me off to the new concept.
I've now done a fair amount of work converting class-based components to function-based components with Hooks. For the vast majority of these "refurbished" components, when I'm done with the conversion, I sit back and look at the difference and think, "Yeah... it's basically the same thing, with just a modestly-different syntax." And by now, there are many blogs/tutorials/etc that purport to show you how your old, stodgy class-based components can be converted to Hooks. Inevitably, the author drones on about how much "better" the Hooks version is. They declare it to be "cleaner". And yet... it looks damn-near the same.
But like so many of the other elitist trends in the JavaScript community, once the fanboys decide that Pattern Y is just clearly superior to Pattern X, there's no reasoning with them. To be honest, I've kinda given up the theoretical fight, because I'm tired of someone (e.g., hiring managers) looking down their noses at my horrible, ugly, unconscionable code that uses class-based components. If I showed a lot of React devs how I've managed to delivered quantum computing in JavaScript - but I did it in (egads!) a class-based component, there are just too many fanboys out there who will scrunch up their face and look at my revolutionary code as though it's the digital equivalent of a fart.
FWIW, I wrote an entire post about the odd demonization of the class keyword in JavaScript:
Another thing that I don't particularly like about Hooks is that they feel very much like an all-or-nothing proposition. Yes, I know that you can use functional, Hook-based components in the same codebase with old-fashioned class-based components, but I've already seen that run into a series of headaches that I would've never had to deal with if the Hooks Cartel hadn't decided that "Classes are bad... mmmkay???"
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I guess this post is kinda old - but it popped up today in my Dev.to feed, so...
On a practical level, I've noticed that the "life cycle" of Hooks isn't completely analogous to class-based components. This has caused me some degree of headaches, and I've only recently begun using Hooks heavily. They say things in the docs like "this Hook is analogous to this lifecycle method", but, umm... not exactly. I know that part of this is just about learning the ins-and-outs of Hooks, but it can still be frustrating when you've pretty-much mastered class-based components.
On a more subjective level, I have a really hard time whenever I'm doing "Pattern X" and then someone comes along (like Dan Abramov) and says, "Yeah... that other way you're doing everything sucks - so you should do it instead with 'Pattern Y'." To be clear, I'm always open to reading/hearing about new innovations. But when I see the "innovation", I need to see some compelling reason to switch. And no, the reason can't simply be, "The Old Method is stooopid and the New Method is awesome - so use the new method." That kinda "reasoning" is a quick way to turn me off to the new concept.
I've now done a fair amount of work converting class-based components to function-based components with Hooks. For the vast majority of these "refurbished" components, when I'm done with the conversion, I sit back and look at the difference and think, "Yeah... it's basically the same thing, with just a modestly-different syntax." And by now, there are many blogs/tutorials/etc that purport to show you how your old, stodgy class-based components can be converted to Hooks. Inevitably, the author drones on about how much "better" the Hooks version is. They declare it to be "cleaner". And yet... it looks damn-near the same.
But like so many of the other elitist trends in the JavaScript community, once the fanboys decide that Pattern Y is just clearly superior to Pattern X, there's no reasoning with them. To be honest, I've kinda given up the theoretical fight, because I'm tired of someone (e.g., hiring managers) looking down their noses at my horrible, ugly, unconscionable code that uses class-based components. If I showed a lot of React devs how I've managed to delivered quantum computing in JavaScript - but I did it in (egads!) a class-based component, there are just too many fanboys out there who will scrunch up their face and look at my revolutionary code as though it's the digital equivalent of a fart.
FWIW, I wrote an entire post about the odd demonization of the
classkeyword in JavaScript:dev.to/bytebodger/the-class-boogey...
Another thing that I don't particularly like about Hooks is that they feel very much like an all-or-nothing proposition. Yes, I know that you can use functional, Hook-based components in the same codebase with old-fashioned class-based components, but I've already seen that run into a series of headaches that I would've never had to deal with if the Hooks Cartel hadn't decided that "Classes are bad... mmmkay???"