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Hasty Treat - Why should I use React Hooks?

In this Hasty Treat, Scott and Wes talk about React Hooks and why you might want to use them instead of class components.

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Show Notes

03:54 - Decouple the UI from the logic

  • This wasn’t impossible with class-based components, but we started using HOC to do this.
  • With hooks, it makes you decouple what it does and how it looks.
  • Makes things like GraphQL code gen possible
  • Multiple pieces of state or functionality
  • Share commonly used functionality among projects and components

10:31 - Reduction in code

  • Lifecycle methods were often redundant. useEffect offers a way to prevent the duplication that can happen with component did update and did mount. This gives you a way to say, “Hey, run this code when these things change.”

13:30 - useEffect’s dependencies

  • These give you access to targeted control over side effects rather than just something changed.

14:15 - Easier to grok

  • What happens? When? Where? It’s mostly in the hook.

16:09 - Simplicity in usage

  • Thing, updateThing is more targeted than set state
  • Ref makes way more sense with useRef
    • String refs weren’t great, the function ref thing was obnoxious

21:07 - Gripes about Hooks

  • Naming is kind of odd
    • Vue did a better job with the names
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