Ask HN: Why React developers don't want to use UI builder?

I searched your Medium article for a link to an online demo for Structor and couldn't find one, perhaps that is letting you down.

Certainly looks like a promising and very comprehensive project. I'm not using React right now but I've definitely bookmarked this to come back to. Good luck!

Marketplaces classically suffer from the chicken and egg problem. No point in distributing via marketplace if no one is buying there, no point in trying to buy there if no one is distributing (this is true even if "buying" is free).

For open-source stuff, npm is pretty much the One True Way to distribute JS libraries these days. If I'm looking for a component, I'll expect to find it by google and install it from npm.

(As far as Structor itself, I'm not at all clear on what it's supposed to do for me. The article is very long and covers too much ground. I don't see myself as likely to use a UI builder in any case, though. My current React work is all with bespoke UI controls, look of which is given to me by a designer.)

Just one data point: I never heard of it or honestly thought to look for such a thing. Might just be a marketing issue?

BTW, I _have_ heard of React Storybook (https://github.com/kadirahq/react-storybook) and happened to find OverReact (http://www.overreact.io/) which look similar at first glance. Can you give us a quick comparison?

Thanks for creating/introducing me to Structor... I'll look at it for new components. :)

I've seen you post links to Structor on HN and Reddit several times over the past few months. For whatever reason, none of the threads seem to have gotten any attention at all. Not sure why.

As for looking for React components, my go-to site is generally https://js.coach, and sometimes searching on NPM.

I don't have a lot of interest in relying on some random component I downloaded on a whim. Not even for personal projects.

And for my own components, I can't see how it'll be faster than just implementing them in my own project, or React Storybook.

On top of that, my experience with UI builders in the past has been that they're rather hard to work with and typing out the HTML myself is not only faster, but also more flexible and more likely to end up doing what I actually want... And probably with less code.

It seems that "UI builder" words totally disqualify any tool which was named so.

Biggest challenge for UI Builders is that programming unfortunately has the accepted meaning of typing cryptic colorful ASCII text into an editor. Stuff that makes programming easy is mainly for users who don't know how to program.

Not that I think it should be that way, that's just the psychology of programmers. Of course many don't realize that or won't admit it.

Also some programmers really haven't got the idea of code reuse through components. They don't understand how useful it is. But sometimes it also is in the first category of something that makes programming too easy so they don't want to be associated with that because they want to be known as an engineer that does hard things.

Also, even though people sometimes try new things on purpose, they usually do most things just because a lot of people are already doing that. So even if someone likes your system unless they perceive it as being popular already they may not use it.

I think most developers are fine just plucking the most active and "starred" repositories on github.

I tried Structor briefly and while I liked the idea in principle, my tooling and requirements are changing too quickly and I do a better job keeping my dependencies up to date. I feel that adding an extra layer of complexity between or adjacent to my application and the dependencies I'm probably already pulling from npm/github is going to be viewed by many as needless when importing components from modules is painless enough as it is.

Still, I like your project and it has a lot of potential.

Just want to add one more video about Srtuctor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z96xYa51EWI

You are essentially building a marketplace so you'll need both suppliers and consumers. This is hard because one side relies heavily upon another. Typically, you need to boost one side first and then the other side might catch up. In other words, you need to build up either 1) the consumer side (say, if you can make this app so easily to use that people will love it despite a poor supply of UI components) or 2) the supplier side (for example, if you can somehow import 20k React components from npm or github to your marketplace)