Thanks for the essay, it was a great read. Maybe my understanding is wrong, but I am slightly perplexed by one idea. I really like the link you have created between the designer's and developer's workflow, and I think your essay touches on an ideal. But, from an applied perspective, this may be difficult to attain when creating components that need to visually transition between state within the original element.
Using your video player example, if the video is loading (state 1), and once loaded, it starts playing (state 2), wouldn't a pure functional approach imply the entire <video> DOM element is replaced by a new one in the change from state 1 to state 2? What if I only wanted to animate the loading bar away and fade out the thumbnail when leaving the loading state, while maintaining the original HTML element?
I'm curious to know if you've thought about this, and have any insight, because it's something I hope to understand. Thanks.
React (and others, I'd assume) does this by keeping a virtual DOM and then only applying the DOM manipulation necessary to get existing state to match desired state.
Hey, sorry for the late reply. I have touched on React. But, I am familiar with Ember, Backbone, Vue and Riot. Nonetheless, could you please explain further?
Using your video player example, if the video is loading (state 1), and once loaded, it starts playing (state 2), wouldn't a pure functional approach imply the entire <video> DOM element is replaced by a new one in the change from state 1 to state 2? What if I only wanted to animate the loading bar away and fade out the thumbnail when leaving the loading state, while maintaining the original HTML element?
I'm curious to know if you've thought about this, and have any insight, because it's something I hope to understand. Thanks.