instantsearch VS uix

Thanks! Here's a GH Issue about it that I follow: https://github.com/algolia/instantsearch/discussions/5413#di...

One example of this pattern is Searchkit [0] which performs most of its logic inside a singleton Searchkit class which is instantiated and passed as a prop to the root React component. A bonus is that it's easier to implement bindings for Angular, Svelte, etc. since they can rely mostly on the class. For example, it looks like Searchkit now suggests using InstantSearch (react-instantsearch-dom) [1] from Algolia, i.e. an entirely different maintainer, and it creates the bindings with a `Client(new SearchKit(...))` adapter [2] around the class (see the code on the home page at [0]).

[0] https://www.searchkit.co/

[1] https://github.com/algolia/instantsearch

[2] https://github.com/searchkit/searchkit/blob/main/packages/se...

We will use React, Next.JS, Instantsearch and Searchkit to build a search UI.

Algolia suggest to use InstantSearch.js library to build your search interface and perform search queries directly from the end-user browser without going through your server.

Like the speed of our search, but want your own implementation? We got you covered! Internally, our widget uses our Instant Search Client to handle all the requests and functionality. With this client you can build your own solution or connect it to for example instantsearch.js or react-instantsearch-dom. With these packages, you can create your own UI that is connected to Afosto Instant Search. Take a look at the demo on our website, or use the CodePen below as an example.

No UI specified but they do have tutorials for InstantSearch

But it also makes it easy to be integrated within existing applications by using the InstantSearch.js library through the Typesense-InstantSearch-Adapter.

> But Reagent supports functional components as well, with hooks and all.

I addressed this already: while reagent is able to emit function components, there is a performance penalty to this.[1]

> I also very much like Hiccup, and so do many of us, because code is data and data is code, and Helix has decided not to support that.

Hiccup is convenient to write, but it is a constant run-time cost and a significant storage cost given that you have to store long series of constructors to cljs.core.PersistentVector in your bundle, have the JS runtime actually construct the vector, then pass it through a Hiccup interpreter to finally produce DOM nodes and throw away the persistent vector, only to repeat this entire process again on re-render.[2]

> Helix has decided not to support that.

That is simply not true. From the Helix documentation[2],

> If you want to use libraries like sablono, hicada or even hx hiccup parser, you can easily add that by creating a custom macro.

These are all Hiccup interpreters you can readily use.

IME there is very little difference between using the $ macro in Helix and writing Hiccup. I do not really miss Hiccup when I use Helix, and you still have data as code ;)

While this is from an unrelated project, there are benchmarks[3] done against Reagent that demonstrate the sheer overhead it has. In practice it is not a big problem if you rarely trigger a re-render, but otherwise it is a non-trivial cost, and if you want to use modern React features (like Suspense), there is a lot of r/as-element mingling going on, converting cases, etc. that simply make Reagent feel more tedious to use than Helix.

Also, the newer UIx2, which largely borrows from Helix, is "3.2x faster than Reagent" according to one of the contributors.[4]

I think it'd be worthwhile to benchmark all of these libraries against each other and record the data in one place. Maybe I'll get around to doing it this weekend :)

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[1] https://github.com/reagent-project/reagent/blob/master/doc/R...

[2] https://github.com/lilactown/helix/blob/master/docs/faq.md#w...

[3] https://github.com/roman01la/uix#benchmarks

[4] https://github.com/pitch-io/uix/pull/12