Top all-time · #486
James Long
Personal blog · jlongster.com · on HN as jlongsterprogrammingweb
James Long's personal blog at jlongster.com covers programming and web. Since 2009, 118 different Hacker News readers have linked it 242 times, most often “Removing User Interface Complexity, or Why React is Awesome”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
Sometimes recommended · 11 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link James Long's posts to learn React by its concepts, and for side-by-side code and demo tutorials. Commenters point to one post, Removing User Interface Complexity, as the read that explains React's advantages.
- Recommended for · 11 comments
- Explains React's concepts rather than its code; side-by-side code and demo format; spells out React's advantages.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 40 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- Removing User Interface Complexity, or Why React is Awesome21 people · 22 mentions · first linked 2014-05-13
- A future for SQL on the web15 people · 16 mentions · first linked 2021-08-12
- Transducers.js: A JavaScript Library for Transformation of Data7 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2014-09-18
- Writing apps for the iPhone in Scheme6 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2009-06-17
- Taming the Asynchronous Beast with CSP in JavaScript5 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2014-09-08
- A Study on Solving Callbacks with JavaScript Generators4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2013-06-05
- Why use Gambit Scheme for application development?3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2009-07-21
- Why does the chromaticity diagram look like that?3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2024-01-08
- What’s in a Continuation (2016)3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2016-05-24
- Compiling LLJS to asm.js gives near C speed w. JS subset using typed arrays3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2013-03-23
What Hacker News says?
I always recommend this article to people who want to learn react, as it focuses on the concepts and not the code, which actually differs a lot on if you use a JS compiler: http://jlongster.com/Removing-User-Interface-Complexity,-or-... The author creates a library, piece by piece, which introduces the same concepts. Makes it much easier to jump into the 'real' framework.
Comment linking /Removing-User-Interface-Complexity,-or-Why-React-is-Awesome
on “React 16”Submitted A future for SQL on the web as a story · 925 points
HN discussionI'm excited about this too. I just wrote a blogging engine for node that allows you to edit posts in a web-based editor: http://jlongster.com/edit/Introducing-Nunjucks,-a-Better-Jav... I absolutely love the simplicity of Markdown, especially with github's addition of code fences/blocks. It's so trival now to add code and have it automatically highlighted. It's not nearly that simple in other formats (to get autohigh…
Comment linking /edit/Introducing-Nunjucks,-a-Better-Javascript-Templating-System?redirected=true
on “The Future of Markdown”Submitted Removing User Interface Complexity, or Why React is Awesome as a story · 632 points
HN discussionNot to distract from the topic, but jlongster's posts should be a case study into how to make an effective demo/tutorial on the web. The side by side code/demo format is very well done and should be the de facto way to do code + demo. There have been so many times when I've been reading a tutorial and click on a demo link that opens a new tab. This makes me completely lose context as I switch back and forth between…
Comment linking /Writing-Your-First-Sweet.js-Macro
on “Removing User Interface Complexity, or Why React is Awesome”Submitted First Impressions Using React Native as a story · 539 points
HN discussionDavid Nolen - http://swannodette.github.io/ James Long - http://jlongster.com/ I follow these guys for similar reasons. They always seem to be a couple steps ahead of the rest of the industry and it's frankly a little embarrassing how productive they are. Come to think of it maybe I'd feel better about myself as a programmer if I stopped following them...
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Which developers do you closely follow?”Submitted A Prettier JavaScript Formatter as a story · 498 points
HN discussionSweet. I'll watch out for wherever you guys end up. Might be worth reading one of the react native devs about why animations might still be hard: http://jlongster.com/First-Impressions-using-React-Native#co... This idea is also why I hooked up the css-layout project ( https://github.com/facebook/css-layout ) to a live demo to play around with: http://layout.jlongster.com/
Comment linking /First-Impressions-using-React-Native
on “First Impressions Using React Native”Submitted How I Became a Better Programmer as a story · 439 points
HN discussionThe mental model is much simpler because your `render` method describes UI at any point of time . Not just the DOM, but your own components too. On the inside, any component can have its own state, but from the outside, it's not visible, and components using it don't care or know about it. Separating `props` and `state`, component boundaries, lack of two-way binding and predictable top-down data flow make it easy to…
Comment linking /Removing-User-Interface-Complexity,-or-Why-React-is-Awesome
on “First Impressions Using React Native”Submitted How I became a better programmer (2017) as a story · 430 points
HN discussionPutting aside the intention of this agreement which does seem targeted at the Flash-to-iPhone compiler, this just seems overly broad and silly from a "how things work" point of view. Let's say I write an iPhone app originally in Scheme (like this guy did: http://jlongster.com/blog/2009/06/17/write-apps-iphone-schem... ), and compile it down to C, which is then compiled to object code and linked against the iPhone li…
Comment linking /blog/2009/06/17/write-apps-iphone-scheme/
on “New iPhone Agreement Bans Flash-to-iPhone Compiler & Others”Submitted Presenting the Most Over-Engineered Blog Ever as a story · 378 points
HN discussionWow, this could also ban iPhone apps from using Scheme ( http://jlongster.com/blog/2009/06/17/write-apps-iphone-schem... ) or maybe even model-driven tools ( http://code.google.com/p/iphonical/ ). Telling developers which languages to use? Might as well stick with enterprise software development, more innovation going on over there Apple!
Comment linking /blog/2009/06/17/write-apps-iphone-scheme/
on “New iPhone Agreement Bans Flash-to-iPhone Compiler & Others”Submitted Starters and Maintainers as a story · 304 points
HN discussionOr LLJS: http://jlongster.com/Compiling-LLJS-to-asm.js,-Now-Available...
Comment linking /Compiling-LLJS-to-asm.js,-Now-Available-
on “Mozilla and Epic Announce Unreal Engine for the Web”Submitted Doing work locally minimizes problems with Electron apps as a story · 285 points
HN discussionThere is a video that describes "Immediate-Mode Graphical User Interfaces" really well, see: https://twitter.com/stoikerty/status/467047333453381632 There is also a lengthy and insightful blog-post about the subject where I found the video: http://jlongster.com/Removing-User-Interface-Complexity,-or-...
Comment linking /Removing-User-Interface-Complexity,-or-Why-React-is-Awesome
on “Flipboard releases React Canvas”Submitted Why does the chromaticity diagram look like that? as a story · 276 points
HN discussionAmelius, I cannot reply to you directly for some reason. Anyway... So say you're rendering some long list of items. Because react is just plain JS (no templates!), you will map the array of items to components in your render. You give each item a key so that react can reconcile components across renders. If component with same key is returned from render next time then it's kept in the DOM (and any updates applied),…
Comment linking /Removing-User-Interface-Complexity,-or-Why-React-is-Awesome
on “Use ReactJS to Build Native Apps”Submitted Statements about the Mobile Web as a story · 273 points
HN discussionyou might want to sit down for this one, but we're pretty close (sqlite): https://jlongster.com/future-sql-web
Comment linking /future-sql-web
on “MangoDB: An open-source MongoDB alternative”Submitted Prettier 1.0 as a story · 270 points
HN discussionIt's all about "butter" vs "stutter". And as a Firefox fanboy, I'm sad to report that Firefox is on the latter end of the continuum. What you describe is my experience exactly -- except that it's not quite limited to mobile. I do all my primary development against Firefox. I'm content to optimize for Gecko, and I've learned what it handles well and what it doesn't [0]. In cases where I've really doubled down to opti…
Comment linking /Radical-Statements-about-the-Mobile-Web
on ““The colored boxes indicate which CPU core performed layout for each node””Submitted Stop Writing JavaScript Compilers, Make Macros Instead as a story · 242 points
HN discussionThe complaint was about IndexedDB access, not local memory. Folk mentioning this are usually referring to the disastrous implementation in Chrome: see https://dev.to/skhmt/why-are-indexeddb-operations-significan... and https://jlongster.com/future-sql-web
Comment linking /future-sql-web
on “Offline-First Database Comparison”Submitted The Story of My Desk as a story · 216 points
HN discussionhttp://jlongster.com/Removing-User-Interface-Complexity,-or-...
Comment linking /Removing-User-Interface-Complexity,-or-Why-React-is-Awesome
on “Is ReactJS really fast?”Submitted Immutable Data Structures and JavaScript as a story · 177 points
HN discussion
