(To get ahead of the common objection: of course it's still JavaScript by virtue of being implemented in JavaScript. But so are Svelte, Vue et all)
Hooks are functions that need to be called before early returning, in a function that provides a context for them. They are also just Javascript, they can be implemented with no build tools.
If you haven't, I recommend reading the (original?) article https://journal.stuffwithstuff.com/2015/02/01/what-color-is-...
This is like when you are doing embedded programming, holding the API functions you need to call in a special sequence to the same standard as people writing their own DSLs with templates.
I always hated templating languages
> Greenspun's {{rules.length | ordinal}} rule:
> Any sufficiently complicated templating language contains an ad-hoc, informally-specified, bug-ridden, slow implementation of half of the host language
But after working with Vue for a 18 months and expecting to hate it, I actually very much enjoyed it. The biggest downside is strictly one component per file.
Edit: in case I've come across as some kind of react hater, I was an early adopter and still use it professionally to this day
Agreed, and Vue does it right exactly because they don't let you do complex things in the template. You can use ternaries in a pinch, but `computed`s exist so there isn't even a reason to do stuff like that. There's like... 10? directives that you can use and they are extremely obvious as to what they're doing, and the handlebar syntax itself is extremely limited and doesn't let you do any crazy stuff with it.
I think semantics could be a more objective way to assess the DX of frameworks because you can have/add a syntactic layer on top that suits your preferences [1]. Semantics would be things like rules of hooks, footguns of `useEffect`, component level reactivity rather than fine-grained reactivity, etc. The high level outcome of this would be being able to answer the following question:
"How likely is it that this framework will put me in the pit of success with minimal overhead?"
[1] https://vuejs.org/guide/extras/render-function.html#jsx-tsx
With jsx, I don't think it's possible - I need to return it.
So even if Svelte is a DSL, to me it feels closer to web standard and jsx
And god help you if you want to mix component level code inside React-land and "vanilla". They had to add 3 new hooks over the last 5 years to try and alleviate those issues, all while gaslighting the community and tool authors that the were "holding it wrong".
SolidJS is far better when it comes to how well it follows expectations, and how well it integrates.
