uix VS rain

Check out uix too: https://github.com/pitch-io/uix

…it’s a reagent alternative for modern react.

> 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 :)

---

[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

If your heart’s set on following React latest closely though, UIx2 seems like a great library, and has a migration path from reagent: https://github.com/pitch-io/uix/blob/master/docs/interop-with-reagent.md

It's been a while since I posted updates on UIx, but here it is, v0.8.1 with API compatibility for React v18.2.0 https://github.com/pitch-io/uix/blob/master/CHANGELOG.md

I suppose one of the best usecases of code sharing is to do Hydrating Server-Side-Rendered web apps just like Next.js. Not too many other languages are capable of doing this outside of Node and Clojure. For this reason it's kind of surprising that it's not more common in Clojure, seems like most people are just building old fashioned SPA's in Reagent/Reframe rather than competing with Next, but pitch's UIX library does seem to support it https://github.com/pitch-io/uix

When I was looking into ClojureScript I was kind of concerned at the complexity of writing applications in ReFrame which seems to be what most of the community seems to be using. I've developed apps in this kind of event-emitting/event handler style before in JavaScript and found it quickly got quite out of hand. For my next app I will want to go with something like React-Query that in a sort of declarative way handles all your data fetching for you, and lets you decouple your components from the getting ahold of the data they depend on. I also searched far and wide for some kind of framework/library that supports SSR+CSR like Next.js but I don't think there's anything ready yet except maybe https://github.com/pitch-io/uix.

Might want to check out Uix2 by pitch.io here https://github.com/pitch-io/uix/blob/master/docs/server-side-rendering.md Also there's https://inertiajs.com/ which is pretty interesting and has a 3rd party adapter for clojure https://inertiajs.com/community-adapters

I was starting greenfield I would consider looking further afield, maybe to UIx²

> - Java stack traces make the above very hard to do.

If I don't know where the problem is, I'll look at the Java stack trace and start adding `tap>` calls to see the flow of data. Since Clojure programs are data-oriented, inspecting the state that's flowing through the function arguments is usually all that's needed. It's a bit different process, though. Can you elaborate on your issues with the Java stack traces?

Here's a relevant comment from Alex Miller: https://www.reddit.com/r/Clojure/comments/80al23/how_do_i_do...

> - You're a second class citizen if you don't use emacs. [...]

This doesn't really ring true for me even if a lot of docs are written for emacs. At work people use vim, emacs, VSCode, and IntelliJ. As I alluded to earlier, I think IntelliJ is the one that "just works". If you haven't tried it, I recommend giving it a shot. Personally, I've never been a fan of the "Clojure for the Brave and True" book because learning Clojure and emacs at the same time is a BAD IDEA, and it gives a false impression that emacs is somehow necessary when it isn't.

> - Complaining about Javascript and React and then having your whole ecosystem wrap around Javascript and React is really obnoxious. Reagent is falling behind in React versions and it's missing out on performance enhancements. If you need to do niche React things, it's a pain in the ass.

Reagent works with React 18, function components, Suspense, React.lazy, hydrateRoot, etc... Honest question: what do you feel like you're missing out on right now by using Reagent? IMO, concerns about Reagent's performance are overblown. I don't think most apps suffer from this issue, they suffer form complexity. The Reagent/Re-frame API is the same as it was when I built my first app with it six years ago and the core model is still solid. One critical thing I do think is missing is SSR integration. I recently started a library to work on this: https://github.com/rads/rain

Here are some thoughts from the creator of Helix (successor to Reagent): https://www.reddit.com/r/Clojure/comments/11uluj4/comment/jc...

> - This might just be me, but I used Citrus with Rum and I found it to be the most over abstracted thing I've ever seen in my life. I know it was inspired by re-frame, so maybe re-frame is the same. But it's like Redux X10 in terms of verbosity.

I haven't used Citrus with Rum, but I think Reagent/Re-frame is worth checking out. You're probably going to have a better experience because it's a more mature stack. If you find Re-frame too much, the Reagent ratoms still work and are as simple as it gets for state management.

> - Call me crazy, but the Java/Script interop is worse than other guest languages because there's huge impedance mismatch between functional and OOP.

> - There are very popular broken libraries. People say "It's okay if a library hasn't been updated in 6 years, because Clojure is so stable!." This is a total myth, there have been several flat out broken libraries being recommended in tutorials.

Can you share what libraries you're talking about and/or what issues you ran into?

> - While people are working on frameworks (Biff, Fulcro), there are no "best choices" for a lot of problems yet and it leads to frustration just trying to make a simple crud app.

In my opinion, Biff is the future for server-side apps. It works really well out-of-the-box and the pieces are there to improve it over time. After using om.next and getting burned by it, I haven't had much interest in Fulcro.

> The community hasn't been unfriendly or unhelpful, but sometimes it feels like I'm speaking to aliens.

I'd recommend the Clojurians Slack for support. Hit me up there (@rads) if you decide to give Clojure another shot and want some help working through some of the issues you mentioned.