Has anyone tried to develop anything with MSFT's Fluid Framework [1], which is used to build Loop? I have not got a chance to check details. But it seems quite nice. Any general remarks are welcome.
Particularly, I'm interested in understanding customizability of Fluid components, integration with React, and any concerns about Azure service lock-in.
[1] "The Fluid Framework is a library for building distributed, real-time collaborative web applications using JavaScript or TypeScript." https://github.com/microsoft/FluidFramework
I haven't used it, only read through documentation, but IMO Fluid's problem is not so much lock-in as an embrace of old-school columnar storage and handle-based object manipulation. An experienced Windows developer or game dev might feel entirely at home with the tradeoffs/footguns implied by https://fluidframework.com/docs/build/dds/#picking-the-right... ... but show that to a junior React developer and they're likely to be fundamentally confused, or worse assume that the only code example shown is a valid code example. (People writing documentation: please do not make one of the most prominent code examples in your Getting Started an example of what not to do!). And on the handle front, https://fluidframework.com/docs/build/data-modeling/#using-h... is similarly counterintuitive, to say the least.
Comparatively, I'm much more excited about Automerge https://github.com/automerge/automerge, which promises much friendlier developer ergonomics as simple as:
doc1 = Automerge.change(doc1, 'Mark card as done', doc => {
doc.cards[0].done = true
})