015 Michael Jackson and Ryan Florence explain that React.js really changes how we think about building web and mobile apps

“It’s so rare that something actually comes along that really changes how we think about building stuff” - Michael Jackson

1. Episode Info
2. Show Notes and Timeline
3. Michael Jackson and Ryan Florence React.js training
4. Links and Resources
   1. Online Training Courses
   2. Training
   3. Mentioned in the episode
   4. Follow
5. Related content
6. Video

Episode Info

• Episode: CW 015
• Published: April 8th, 2015
• Tags: javascript, reactjs,nodejs,isomorphic
• Duration: 1:16:34
• Updated: 2015-04-11

Show Notes and Timeline

• 2:40 - What’s special about React.js?

“For me personally, it changed the way that I code as much as jQuery did back in 2008.” - Michael Jackson

“OMG, This is really going to change the way that I work and how much I enjoy my job on a day to day basis.” - Michael Jackson

• 5:00 - React.js doesn’t care about how you represent your data, models can be simple objects and arrays

“What excites me about React.js is… it doesn’t care about your data model, you just use plain JavaScript objects… For my models I use: array, Object, Number, …” - Ryan Florence

“The new paradigm with React.js is we aren’t observing, we aren’t having a bunch of events, we are just throwing data at functions and then they return descriptions of UI” - Ryan Florence

• 6:40 - Javascript becomes our templating language

“It’s hard to explain until you start doing it how big of a shift this makes in your user interface development, to not worry about your app over time; you’re not mutating the state of objects over time in your UI components” - Ryan Florence

“We get to use the solutions that JavaScript already provides like modules and scope… we don’t have to wait for the framework’s template language to implement a solution for that” - Ryan Florence

• 8:25 - React.js, Angular, and Ember are pushing the language forward (ES6)
• 10:56 - Is React.js differnet from other SPA frameworks?
• 11:30 - React.js could be a good rendering tool for many frameworks
• 12:10 - Integrating React.js into existing code is easy without a full rewrite
• 13:30 - React.js be added to mature apps, not just greenfield apps
• 14:50 - Angular 2.0 and Ember 2.0 look a lot like and sound a lot like React.js. It is influencing so many other frameworks.
• 15:30 - Who can use React.js? What types of projects?
• 19:00 - Server side rendering - Isomorphic javascript
• 22:30 - React.js doesn’t care where you render - client, server, canvas, etc.
• 24:00 - Is React.js hard to learn?
• 25:00 - React.js allows you to code yourself out of problems
• 26:00 - Smaller API’s are easier to learn
• 28:10 - What brought Michael and Ryan to using React.js?

For me, one of the most awkward parts about #Emberjs is switching back and forth between Handlebars templates and component code. Any ideas?

— Michael Jackson (@mjackson) May 13, 2014

• 28:45 - Instructure had invested in Ember but were having struggles shipping and learning

“At Instructure, we bet on Ember… we were messing with it for almost a year and kind of weren’t shipping anything…” - Ryan Florence

• 30:00 - After an hour of usin