Comment by jazzypants
2 days ago
This article never mentions React. This has nothing to do with React. There's a reason people say "react is not reactive"[1].
Signals are derived from Observables[2] which were first used in Adam Haile's S.JS[2] and made popular in JavaScriptLand by Ryan Carniato's SolidJS[3].
[1] - https://dev.to/this-is-learning/how-react-isn-t-reactive-and...
[2] - https://dev.to/this-is-learning/the-evolution-of-signals-in-...
[3] - https://www.solidjs.com/
Fwiw knockoutjs seems to predate s.js (2010 vs 2013)
I can’t remember if at that point it was the first lib to uses observables.
Oof! I can actually still see a link to Knockout.js in my clipboard, so I clearly meant to add it as a source for that post. I also got the numbering all wrong, so I guess I should have spent another minute checking it for accuracy.
Thanks for the correction so that other people can learn!
Since GP mentioned React, I think MobX was more popular there and seems to predate SolidJS. Also, Valtio is a modern version of the same idea but with a lot less boilerplate.
> made popular in JavaScriptLand by Ryan Carniato's SolidJS[3]
Are you sure it hadn't been, by chance, made popular even before by KnockoutJS?
Yeah, as I said in response to another commenter, I actually had a link to Knockout in my clipboard. I'm pretty sure I was supposed to add the link after the word Observable.
Actual popularity to the point that they are now being adopted into the standard (not to say all frameworks except React) came thanks to Ryan. Though he explicitly acknowledges that original ideas come from Knockout, S and Marko