Has anyone done anything non-trivial with [MobX](https://github.com/mobxjs/mobx) as an alternative to redux/flux with react?
I'm curious how that ends up working out. It is intriguing and enticing to me, because I have had similar experiences that the most 'challenging' part of using react is the flux part not the actual react part. But I'm just a react newbie, and based on my experience so far, am scared to go 'off the common path' at all because it tends to end up being a royal mess for reasons I didn't have the experience to predict in advance. :)
I faced this same question on a recent small project. For anyone dipping their toes into React, it's a huge leap of complexity. I thought I could jump into Flux just like React: get familiar with the concepts, do a tutorial or two, and start building. Nope.
I looked into Redux, but quickly realized it was overkill for my simple project. I eventually settled on Reflux, and I would highly recommend it for those who are just getting started with Flux.
Yeah, I can see the value in redux for a big app with lots of complex state to manage (eg Facebook), but it seems like major overkill in a lot of smaller apps where people seem to be reaching for it by default for some reason. Plain React components and a few helper modules can get you a surprisingly long way--there's really no need for more framework until deeply nested components make simple argument passing unweildy.
I saw this from Redux's creator that aligns with my take: "When people say setState() is an anti-pattern, they mean 500-line components with a complex setState() soup scattered across event handlers. When you spend your days looking for bugs in those handlers and moving them up and down component hierarchy, consider extracting it." https://twitter.com/dan_abramov/status/725090047557558272
I had that whole 'moving values and events up and down the component hierarchy, driving me nuts' thing going on when I tried to make an editor page for a two-level list. I added Redux and now I just directly read/update the list in the store from every component in the editor.
