Without a compiler, and with the virtualized DOM paradigm, I don’t really know that react is in a great position to benefit from signals. Frameworks that use compilers and “templated“ DOM (including JSX usage) will always have an advantage using any reactive primitive for targeted updates - ThreadSky

benlesh.bsky.social • 97 days ago

Without a compiler, and with the virtualized DOM paradigm, I don’t really know that react is in a great position to benefit from signals.

Frameworks that use compilers and “templated“ DOM (including JSX usage) will always have an advantage using any reactive primitive for targeted updates

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joe.trusktr.io•96 days ago

For React to fully benefit from Signals, it would need to get rid of vdom. That would be a huge (but really good) breaking change,

joe.trusktr.io•96 days ago

and then React would basically become Solid.js where signals update discreet pieces of the DOM (rather than virtual trees and diffing of those trees to finally figure out what changed, signals already tell you exactly what changed so vdom diffing is superflous, redundant, and wasteful with Signals).

benlesh.bsky.social•97 days ago

Put differently, if we react has to build an object tree, and then diff it against another object tree in order to know what to update, then targeted updates aren’t really on the table. And reactive types like signals really don’t have any direct advantage for react.

benlesh.bsky.social•97 days ago

useState and useMemo are basically very explicit very poorly integrated signals.

crutchcorn.dev•97 days ago

Cosigned.

tannerlinsley.com•97 days ago

Love this. And true. I forget about the vdom limitations too easily. My last phrase still stands.

jovidecroock.com•97 days ago

We can have a best of both worlds though the DX of renders for i.e. conditional jsx and optimised updates for text and attribute nodes.

We do that in preact-signals

Briefly wrote about the difference to hooks https://jovidecroock.com/blog/signals

crutchcorn.dev•97 days ago

We're actually using our own signals implementation to power various TanStack projects going forward 😄

skybrian.bsky.social•97 days ago

Is Preact any different? I thought the signal library was ok.

justinfagnani.com•97 days ago

I'm no VDOM fan, but I don't think this is necessarily true. Targeted updates can just happen outside of the main update path. This is what we do in Lit.

For a React component that only has targeted updates it turns the function into a setup like Solid, but without the nice syntax for computeds.

rschristian.dev•97 days ago

I do agree, but if they slacken the vdom paradigm a bit and allow signals to directly alter the backing DOM nodes, you can get much of the perf benefit whilst keeping most vdom semantics/control flow.

Not that I think they'd go for it except maybe w/ the compiler, given past comments.

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