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Frame from Pete Hunt - The Secrets of React's Virtual DOM (FutureJS 2014) Plays via YouTube's privacy-enhanced embed

Pete Hunt - The Secrets of React's Virtual DOM (FutureJS 2014)

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Talks
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2 HN users recommended this talk2 months2015–2023 score 2
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026

Commenters point to it as the clearest explanation of why re-rendering beats tracking data changes, and say it sold them on React.

Pete Hunt explains why React's virtual DOM was built, how it compares with databinding-style systems, and what it means for future browser technology. Recorded at FutureJS 2014 in Barcelona.

“Pete Hunt did a great talk on what actually makes React / virtualdom different from other databinding approaches.” (HN, 2015)

2 recommendations · 1 citations · Talks · intermediate · partly dated

3 Hacker News comments

From the HN archive; up to 20 kept per video, favoring different commenters. Recommendations first.

@unsoundInput Jan 2015 Recommends
on HN thread Riot – A React-like, 2.5K user interface library
I agree that calling it "React-like" seems misleading. When I read about a 'x'-like library I expect something that could actually replace 'x' and provide nearly the same features. Pete Hunt did a great talk on what actually makes React / virtualdom different from other databinding approaches.[1] Using this definition Riot.js looks a lot more like Angular, Ember et al. to me. [1] [this video]
Explains what makes React's virtual DOM different from databinding approaches
@yazaddaruvala Jun 2023 Recommends
on HN thread React is 10 years old
I'll try one last time: > Sorry none of this makes any sense to me. If you're not familiar with the MVC variants (MVVM, MVP, MVI, MOVE)[0][1] we should start there. Next you should read through some common mistakes of Backbone.js like applications [link] and some criticisms of MVC on HackerNews in 2012[0]. Finally if you haven't before these talks, they are the ones that sold me on React: - [this video] - [link] - [link] [0] [link] [1] [link]
One of the talks that convinced the commenter of React

Citations, criticism and jokes

@jesstaa Feb 2016 Cites it
on HN thread Mobx: Simple, scalable state management
Performance characteristics are that this increases expsense with the size of your data where as just re-rendering increases expense with the size of your UI. It's actually much more common to have lots of data but only render a small amount of it, so re-rendering is generally cheaper. The size and complexity of UIs have a natural limit because of screen size and usability, but the amount of data you use to generate a UI has essentially no natural upper limit. Pete Hunt gave a talk on exactly this almost two years ago. [this video]
Talk on why re-rendering beats tracking data changes

Video list and Hacker News comment labels from HackerTube (prompted by @karpathy), released under ODC-By 1.0, built on the open-index/hacker-news archive. Hacker News data is provided by Y Combinator; comments remain the work of their authors. Video titles, channel names and thumbnails belong to their creators and are shown via YouTube. HackerTube Watch is an unofficial edition. Data export of 2026-10-31.

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