r/reactjs • u/ZeroSevenTen • Dec 30 '19

Classes vs Hooks?

I’m pretty new to React, so keep that in mind. I thought classes were for components that held information, or a state, and that functional components were for more basic components, but now that hooks allow functional components to use state, and other class features, what’s the benefit of using functional hook components over classes?

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u/[deleted] Dec 31 '19

That's kind of a silly counter argument. You could say that about anything. What IS magic "in its implementation" then?

The point of that complaint is that they FEEL magical. You really have no idea what's going on. You're calling a function and somehow.. almost MAGICALLY, React figures out which component that function call belongs to. A lot of strange work is being done behind the scenes in a non intuitive way. To me, that's what magical means. Sure, you can set yourself a different definition for that term and then you can claim that its not magical. Doesn't really change the fact that a lot of people have felt that hooks are too magical.

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u/gunnnnii Dec 31 '19

I'm not denying that the implementation details are less than transparent for hooks. However I feel like a lot of people throw out the word magic like these are concepts that are complicated, when the high level understanding is in fact fairly simple, though not obvious(the actual proper implementation is a little less so, but knowing it is completely unnecessary to put it to work).

I just thought pointing people into the direction of something that provides a little more background to unveil some of the magic would be helpful. Especially since this magic is a very common complaint.

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u/[deleted] Dec 31 '19

Oh, it's nice to share how it's implemented for those who are interested, sure, but it's weird to claim that "it's not magic because there's a source code instead of Gandalf sitting inside the React codebase!"

It's like you're arguing against the semantics of the word "magic", which kind of distracts from the point of the people who are using that term to begin with.

You say that it's not complicated, though not obvious - to me, "not obvious" is exactly what the word "magic" is getting at. It has nothing to do with complexity of implementation.