React is holding me hostage

For the longest time React was kind of in denial to a large degree about what they were. They called themselves a View library. Hooks have definitely noticeably changed that relationship, & how people integrate app state with React, but the problem here of updating hasn't really changed all that much.

It's not a new thing either. A lot of the initial resistance to React & the VDOM was that it felt like unnecessary work. Because so many frameworks at the time were working towards two-way data-binding systems, which aren't necessarily but were often associated with with smaller, precise DOM updates. HP/LG's WebOS's underlying Enyo project was one high profile would be effort here.

Signals have definitely been a good re-grouping point, for reconsidering what the shape of things might look like, for trying to do a better job.

I'm a bit surprised we're still operating so much at a library level regarding reactive systems/signals. JavaScript objects have quite a lot of flexibility already, and the addition of Proxies added a lot of capabilities. Faint/distanct memory, but I think Proxies were justification for killing Object.observe[1]: now users could do whatever they wanted, so we no longer needed a JS native way to see objects change. Yet, we're still very library based, rather than trying to make objects themselves better, more reactable.

[1] http://web.archive.org/web/20200218195131/https://developer....

React has no real answer to state going sideways.

Then there is controlled/uncontrolled component which is an example of structural instability (what looks like a tiny change to your boss is a bigger deal than it should be) unless you ride the crazy train and use “plain ordinary javascript” to build a parallel system to move (some of) the state around.

https://reagent-project.github.io/

(Submitted title was "React is a fractal of bad design")