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Comment by BossingAround | Hacker News Reader

> This is a deep dive — THIS IS NOT a beginner-friendly post. In this post, I’m describing most of the React programming model from first principles. I don’t explain how to use it — just how it works.

Ok, now that author feels better, let's move on..? Or what is the purpose of such 'disclaimers' and 'warnings'? Let the reader see whether the article is at their appropriate level, don't patronize...

I really dislike these. I can skim the text, and within 30s, I can see whether it might be my level or not. This feels, however, that the author is purposely driving me away for no other reason than 'you don't make a living with react, so shoo, this is for the big boys'.

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The author is well-known and well-cited -- especially for introductory articles about using react and react ecosystem libraries. I think he wants to make it clear to anyone that happens upon or is recommended the article that the contents of the article are not 'required knowledge' for using the library.

I think this is reasonable for this author to want to emphasize. It's quite common for a beginner to make one of several reasoning mistakes that might push them away from trying something or push them away from something they were already using. The beginner who hasn't used a thing yet might think 'I need to understand how this thing works in detail before I can use it' in which case they might think reading an article like this is an appropriate way to get started. The beginner who has already started using a thing might think 'here is a good article about how the thing I've been using works in detail which I can't understand -- therefore this thing I've been using must be too hard for me to use and I should look for something else'.

I assume for popularity retention reasons, the author doesn't want to encourage either of these kinds of mistakes.

The author of the article is a contributor to React and the author of Redux. So the disclaimer is valid, because lots of people read his stuff and might expect some React tutorial or whatever.

I can decide that for myself. I don't need an 'authority' to tell me, regardless of who the author is.

Do you think that without the warning, a beginner would deep into the article, and 50 minutes in, he/she would be like 'heeeey, wait a minute! This is not for me! Why didn't he tell me?'

If not, then such a disclaimer is meaningless.

The disclaimer might serve an important purpose: reduce the amount of questions the author receives via email/Twitter. The disclaimer is obviously not written for you who can decide for yourself, but for people who are quick to write questions instead of reading the damn thing.

How do I know? Because I have disclaimers here and there that are obvious for most people and still help to reduce the support burden.

Because the author doesn't want to intimidate new users by making them feel this is necessary knowledge to learn react. As someone presumably more knowledgeable in the field, it's much easier to judge whether an article is at the right level for you than someone just starting out.

I really don't understand your issue here.

I am not a “beginner” and I appreciate the disclaimer. I value my time: i know the level of the article and i decide to read it when i have more time.

I don't understand why a beginner would skip an article like this. I understand as a beginner I may not understand what's going on. Shielding myself from knowledge I might not fully understand slows down learning. Messy learning by trying to absorb more than can be taken in yet is more effective because the mind will store the parts not understood and you'll be able to connect it as you learn other concepts.

A beginner might be put off using React because they don't understand a blog post about it written by a core contributor. Dan recognised that and added a warning to help those people not be dissuaded. That's basic, friendly writing.

Your complaint about it makes it look like you believe the post was written for you personally, with no regard for the wider audience. That's idiotic.

This makes sense to me as a motivation for the disclaimer, thanks for that perspective.

I did feel that the yellow warning sign was a bit much. There was also a line about it not being for designers. As somebody with both design and engineering backgrounds, I felt less enthusiastic right away — mostly because I dislike buckets being enforced. It encourages people to put themselves into one over the long run, which in turn has a tendency to stunt their progress. It’s also odd when any educational resource (higher ed in the US being a great example) introduces itself by trying to be inaccessible. It feels counter to the professed goal of the institution / article.

Anyways, I guess I felt the comment above is a valid thing to discuss if it could improve other people’s efforts to write similar pieces.

As an aside: ironically, the article is fascinating from a design perspective. Just not the particular bucket of design the author was thinking of when he wrote that line.

For what it’s worth — I pretty much guarantee you that without this disclaimer, this post will make rounds in certain communities on Twitter as “haha React is so complicated glad I don’t use it”. This is an unfortunate reality that I’ve already ran into before.

Another unintended effect can be contributing to the perception that React is only for people with a strong programming background rather than, say, a11y expertise. I don’t want that either and that’s why I mentioned there are multiple ways to look at React.

Yet another problem is that random things from my posts are sometimes used in interview questions. :-/

I trust a curious reader to ignore the disclaimers and dive in anyway.

But I also wish I didn’t need to put it there and I emptathize with your frustration.

Fascinating. I didn’t know that comments like that were a common dynamic. That sounds like framework holy war nonsense. Sorry to hear that such problems come with working on cool stuff like this. To me React always evokes the simplicity of the sample docs, which make it seem very inviting (just haven’t found a project to throw it at yet), so I didn’t have that frame of reference going into it. Not frustrated, just felt “if this guy Dan was a friend and had asked me to read this over, one of my notes might be for the intro to be less restrictive”. So I was surprised that people were calling the original commenter an idiot for suggesting such a sentiment, albeit from a different perspective.

Anyways, thank you for writing the article, it’s really an enjoyable read after a day of wrestling a closed source framework and wishing I could understand how that particular architecture was reasoned about.

I know nothing about React. I opened this article, saw the disclaimer and closed the tab. It’s quite possible that if I hadn’t read the disclaimer I might have tried to read it, decided React is waaaay to complicated for me to learn and never tried it in the future. I think Dan wants to avoid precisely that scenario - scaring away noobs like me from ever trying React.

Of course, he didn’t consider the massive inconvenience he was causing to god level programmers like you when writing his disclaimer. Shame on him!!!

In addition to what the sibling comments are saying, the author has explicitly stated in past posts that he doesn't want this knowledge becoming job interview questions, as (in his opinion) these are non-leaky abstractions that don't affect one's productivity/code-quality on React.

>Ok, now that author feels better, let's move on..? Or what is the purpose of such 'disclaimers' and 'warnings'?

To tell people what to expect going in, so they don't have to lose their time if they're just starting out and looking for a quick high level tutorial etc.

when did it become popular to criticize the form of a technical document? what is the value of /your/ post?

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