I'm trying to get more comfortable with React, so I decided to see how quick I could put together a simple slideshow application when planning for my presentation on the Virtual Forest Initiative yesterday.
Source code is here, and here's a demo:
I also made a slideshow application two years ago in Ember, when I presented on WACEP Weather Roulette: https://github.com/nikolas/weatherroulette-presentation
For whatever reason, I'm happier with my newer one - it's much simpler.
One thing I like about React is that it doesn't assume you're using any overbearing build systems like grunt, gulp, or broccoli. Because, after all, Make is sufficient! And node.js isn't even required to develop and run React applications. I see node.js as a sometimes useful, but not really essential, part of front-end JavaScript development. You can just include the necessary libraries and then include the application code:
<script src="lib/react.js"></script> <script src="lib/react-dom.js"></script> <script src="lib/babel-core-5.8.38.min.js"></script> <-- My application --> <script type="text/babel" src="slideshow.jsx"></script>
I do see node.js as essential for linting checks and testing, but it's nice to not have node as a dependency to deploy the code.