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Comment by icc97 | Hacker News Reader

I find it quite interesting how much of the public face of React that Dan Abramov has become. I really like the openness with which he speaks via his blog, but it feels like all the important React announcements come through him and I'm sure there must be some other very senior FB developers who created React before he arrived who might not be so happy.

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We generally post on our blog when something is _ready_. Blog has to be very high signal/noise ratio so we don't announce something that might be experimental or has a risk of changing significantly there. Because it creates a lot of churn.

Announcements about work in progress (which might be interesting to spectators but doesn't affect anyone's day-to-day usage of React) typically comes from people working on those things.

So you might hear from Brian (https://mobile.twitter.com/brian_d_vaughn) on the Profiler work he's been doing, or from Andrew (https://mobile.twitter.com/acdlite) on scheduling.

I happen to have a large following so I understand why it seems like I'm the only one "announcing" things. Twitter also amplifies it so it kinda feels that way. I encourage you to follow all folks who are currently on our team (see links e.g. in https://wpcouple.com/interview-react-team-facebook-wordpress...).

And keep in mind that announcements directly from me that aren't on React blog/twitter are just that -- things that keep me busy. They're not things you need to know as a React user. When there's something ready that you need to know, the information will be on one of the official sources:

* https://reactjs.org/blog/

* https://mobile.twitter.com/reactjs

Hope this makes sense!

P.S. I'm trying to not mis-represent my role. I do happen to be a "developer advocate" of sort because I enjoy that kind of work in addition to programming. As far as I know my team is supportive of that. Sometimes I make mistakes and they point it out. AFAIK Jordan (who created React) and past contributors also don't mind my active presence. Jordan is currently busy with Reason — you might want to check that out!

Thanks for your reply and your openness. It's great that you find the time to answer random guys on HN.

Since you're here... I do wonder, how much of the React documentation did you write? The 'style' of the writing seems to match yours, e.g. when discussing Immutable JS.

I wrote some pages in the Main Concepts section. Maybe a few others. Hope it's not bad.

No, the React docs are great, working it mostly as a tutorial works well.

Plus in hindsight I could have just looked through this: https://github.com/reactjs/reactjs.org/commits?author=gaearo...

Further, slightly late, reply. I've been looking more at Reason. It's React (not strictly but plays nicely) + Typescript + Immutable JS + Redux all in one fully integrated package. Looks awesome, thanks for the reminder.

It's interesting that the blog needs to be high signal to noise and yet the insinuation there is that twitter does not..

I would personally agree that it is not.

I'm sure I'm _far_ from the only one who doesn't follow much of anything on twitter. And, I'm fairly confident that twitter posts rarely hit hacker news front page. I do, however, read various engineering blogs. Perhaps a different track can be setup for WIP and experiment posts the by the core team...

Dan tweets about React... and music he enjoys. Andrew tweets about Suspense and spinners... and also his thoughts on TV shows, and a bunch of assorted troll tweets. Brian tweets about working on the React DevTools... and also the evening run he's going out on. Seb... okay, so Seb mostly tweets deep thoughts about React and the web platform.

As Dan said, the React blog is where they formally announce things related to React releases and important things the community really ought to know about now. If you follow them on Twitter, you can get insights into what they're working on, and if you don't follow them... well, important comments will still bubble up to other sites like Reddit and HN (as this thread proves), and even if you don't see them here, the critical stuff will be posted on the blog or the official @ReactJS Twitter account when the React team is really ready to officially announce that info in its final form.

I see no reason why they (or any other developer of any kind with a personal Twitter account) should be restricted in what they can talk about. So yes, I would completely say that personal Twitter accounts don't have to be "high signal to noise". A Twitter account is what the owner wants it to be.

I meant specifically within the context of a platform for the developers to communicate information about React.

Twitter is, IMHO, a poor consolation of a communications channel both for the producers and those consumers interested in non-PR reviewed, non-release React information from the developers but not their insights into spinners, TV shows, and whatev.

My general point is that a more official but still on-topic communication channel could be beneficial. I do not believe people should be restricted in what they post on their personal Twitter accounts in this context.

This may be the wrong place, but in response about being a "developer advocate" what about other react projects? react-document-title has a few pull requests without any feedback, I've personally been sidelined since Februrary https://github.com/gaearon/react-document-title/pull/53 when I made a pull request to avoid having to wrap multiple children in a React.Fragment that's child to a DocumentTitle

Maybe my PR was too drastic, I could've just removed the call to React.Children.only

I’m happy to hand the project over to somebody who wants to maintain it. I can’t find time for the long trail of old projects right now.

A reflection: here is someone who's a bit lost on which channels should be used, is looking for feedback, & has in response been struck by the silent disapproval of HN. A sarcastic quip: Thanks for giving some tangible direction on what the correct social behaviors are here

I manage the React team at Facebook. Only a couple of us have been on the team since before Dan, and I don’t think anyone resents his public persona. Quite to the contrary – Dan does a great job representing us. :)

I echo this sentiment!

Thanks for the reply. Good to hear.

>I'm sure there must be some other very senior FB developers who created React before he arrived who might not be so happy.

You might find that not everybody wants to be the face of something. It can be very stressful and people often dehumanize you in their communications as they associate you and the project as the same thing. Think of all the trouble that Lennart Poettering has dealt with as a result of the pushback to systemd.

Yes, a double-edged sword. It's to the credit of the React developers that they've welcomed him. I was just curious as to how the internal politics work there.

People on the team who like to have presence on social media do that. People who don't like it that much, don't. I don't see much politics in this but maybe I'm missing something.

My apologies, I'm guess I'm just too used to seeing internal politics everywhere.

It's an interesting day when Github issues on an official project are considered "social media". I think that can be taken many ways and most of them interesting to ponder.

Yes, but then again, the whole selling point of Github is that it's social media attached to git repositories. That's the reason it's the open source code dumping ground.

I think this misses the point of what a senior developer is.

Nobody builds a huge thing by themselves better than multiple people can. Being a senior developer is enabling a few other people to do their best work.

Dan has been so cordial in every interaction I've seen with him. He can be more conscientious than many devs, so I'm sure it is a talent that the React team likes to showcase.

The truly important announcements come from the whole React team on their actual blog at https://reactjs.org/blog/ , and are written by various team members (such as the "Async Rendering" and "Derived State" posts recently written by Brian Vaughn).

But yeah, if you want a heads-up on where the team is headed and what they're working on, it's worth following them on Twitter, and Dan in particular.

> and I'm sure there must be some other very senior FB developers who created React before he arrived who might not be so happy.

From the very little I know about some of the developers at FB working on React, but I would be very surprised if this was the case. Just because you might feel bothered by Dan Abramov talking on your behalf, doesn't mean those that worked with him do.

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