Am I wrong in hating React JS?

Thank for the feedback. It might have not been obvious in my article but I am definitely open to changing my mind about stuff and I gave 2 examples: Ember & VIM. So just because I hate React now doesn't mean I will not be a fan later.

You're not wrong in hating React, but it is a fad as much as no one wants to believe it. The reason I believe is because no matter how strong the framework, eventually it will be adopted (to some extent) into the native language (which is a good thing). Think about these frameworks:

- jQuery

- Coffeescript

- Backbone

at the time, if I had asked you if those were a fad, you'd think I was crazy. And yet, because of native language enhancements, none of those frameworks are really needed anymore. And I'm sure in 5 years React, Angular, Vue, Ember...you name it, will also likely be a thing of the past.

The important thing that I've learned in my (so far very short) career is that it's always best to know the language first, and the framework second. Frameworks come and go, but the language is permanent. By knowing the language really well, it's strengths and weaknesses, it enables you to determine when a framework is helpful...and more importantly, when a framework is a hindrance.

As an anecdotal example, I had a client that was using a React boilerplate on NPM to do a Foursquare API request. React is like, 50k lines uncompressed? To do that? I was able to replace it with 22 lines of vanilla JS. If you don't know the base language, it's often easier to simply think in the framework and create a bloated environment for very basic things rather than just use what the language gives you. It's faster, it's cleaner, it's more widely supported in browsers, has a larger community, and is more defensible to use the base language than a framework, until the framework does more work to help you than harm you.

So my advice would be, if you're thinking about using React or Angular, think about why you need it. Are you doing heavy lifting on the front-end, like interactive graphics or a dashboard? Sure, those are probably pretty good choices. If not, and you're simply trying to make the front-end more RESTful, with some easier reasoning about your applications, you could probably get away with a lighter framework like Mithril, Elm, or another lightweight framework.

JSX can also be a hard sell for seasoned developers because they've been taught to avoid combining HTML and JS for so long. I initially disliked the Angular templating system because it felt like I was regressing to `on-click="javascript()` code.

While I prefer JSX now, mainly because it is just html/javascript, I sometimes feel that inline conditions/loops like `ng-if` are cleaner - I don't need yet another several lines of a `var` definition, condition, and assignment.

My biggest struggle with React was due to the fact it's a view-only library. Coming from Angular or similar projects you're suddenly in the dark on how best to manage ajax, forms, etc - yet when you power through, you realize it's actually freedom to do whatever you want. Done correctly, that's way more powerful.

I'm with you on the embedded HTML in JavaScript files. There's a reason everyone went nuts for MVC, the seperation of UI code (in my opinion) just makes your life as a developer easier.

> at the time, if I had asked you if those were a fad

I still wouldn't call jquery a fad, just obsolete