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Pete Hunt: React: Rethinking best practices -- JSConf EU

JSConf · 548.1K views · 2013-10-30 · 29:32

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Overview

Pete Hunt of Facebook and Instagram introduces React at JSConf EU 2013 and explains its design principles. He argues that separating templates from logic only separates technologies, not concerns, and makes the case for components.

On Hacker News

HN calls it the famous talk for understanding why React rejected separation of concerns by technology and for newcomers puzzled by JSX.

Recommended by 9 HN people across 9 months · HN mentions 2014–2025

Topics

Web developmentSoftware architecture & design
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reactseparation of concernsjsxcomponentspete huntfrontend

What people said

insin · 2020-05 · Strong recommendation

How far back can we go? insin/DOMBuilder was initially based on a 2006 library of the same - but differently-cased - name by Dan Webb ( [LINK] ) and the earliest variant I can recall was Mochikit.DOM ( [LINK] ) By the end of DOMBuilder's life it could generate DOM or HTML from the same code and I'd tried unsuccessfully to implement a way to rehydrate HTML by hooking up events using the same code on the client. Not long after, I happened to be in the audience for Pete Hunt's React: Rethinking best practices talk at JSConf EU ( [VIDEO] ) and I was totally floored; they'd solved everything I had been trying to do with UI as code and much more, and JSX was the icing on the cake, as using nested object/array syntax has always been rife with comma-management hell when you're maintaining UI code.

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EdwardMSmith · 2018-02 · Strong recommendation

If you’re not sure of the “why” of react, I’ve found that Pete Hunt’s talk “Rethinking Best Practices” gives a great overview of the reasoning behind react. Especially from about 15:15. [VIDEO]

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yCombLinks · 2022-09 · Recommendation

I actually much prefer how react handles this, I think this very early react talk makes a very good point [VIDEO]

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Sources

Video by JSConf, played through YouTube.

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