React: it's technically backwards compatible!

jamesknelson.com

7 pointsjamesknelson3 comments

Interesting that you compare them to mixins, which the react team considered harmful and removed.

What problems do hooks solve better than composition or hoc?

I really haven’t kept up with react, when I last used it 6 months ago I started with the same boilerplate I made in 2017. Could it be things are being added to react that are unnecessary for most small and medium sized apps? I got that feeling when I saw react router 4. At least v6 is moving back towards a simplier api.

Before hooks, it was really common to write container / component pairs. The wrapper would have to be a class component with state and lifecycle hooks, and the inner component would only concern itself with presentation. IIRC, this was recommended in the react docs, although I've seen more than a few people misunderstand this pattern.

Hooks allow a way to abstract all that logic that used to require a component to house it. Components should still only really care about JSX, any logic more complex than an IF statement can live in functions or hooks.

I should also mention, you can access hooks in class components via HOCs. It's just one tiny extra step.

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