The Declarative Mindset - Michael Pearson - UtahJS 2023

Developers generally agree that declarative code is cleaner than imperative code, and yet most projects seem to gradually degrade into tangled, imperative messes. This talk will show why declarative code is desirable and analyze how some of the micro-decisions we make can have outsized consequences as our codebases grow more complex.

What an insightful talk. Thanks so much!

[@mfpears]

0:00 Imperative vs declarative code 4:00 React is not unidirectional 5:30 React is an MVC framework 6:42 Imperative doesn't scale 7:55 Imperative violates separation of concerns 8:46 Overview 9:15 Declarative code is less buggy 9:30 Declarative code is easier to debug 9:47 Declarative code is easier to understand 10:10 Declarative = reactive = unidirectional 10:41 Flux async/effects aren't unidirectional 11:02 Redux's syntactic Grand Canyon 12:12 Imperative code, tempting dead-end 13:07 Declarative needs easy tools 15:03 Have a declarative mindset