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If not React, then what?

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Re: If not React, then what?

#101

Post by dariusj18 »

baobabKoodaa wrote: post #98
quantadev wrote: post #20

The people who don't think React (or Vue) is important are the same ones who have never worked on a large project with lots of screen updates and state changes that absolutely cannot be avoided. React is still #1 in popularity, and the most crucial tool for almost any web developer (aside from using TypeScript, instead of plain JS which is also critical for large projects) React is reported to be used by 39.5% of dev…

> React is reported to be used by 39.5% of developers worldwide, while Vue.js is at 15.4%. The number of "apps" using just HTML+CSS is precisely zero, because those aren't "apps" they're documents. The options you present are: "either use a JS framework or don't use JavaScript at all". That's a false dichotomy. I've built plenty of interactive apps with JavaScript without using frameworks.

> I've built plenty of interactive apps with JavaScript without using frameworks

And once you reach sufficient project complexity, you will end up with just another homegrown framework, with all the lessons learned by mature frameworks, left to be fixed over the next 5 years.

Re: If not React, then what?

#102

Post by pier25 »

oliwarner wrote: post #96

> React developers are web developers. This has felt increasingly untrue recently. I hope I'm just experiencing the peak of the bell curve but I've been bumping into more and more devs who only have experience in SPA React and associated styling frameworks. Ask them to actually style something and they flake out. I was used to some tribalism in backends (everyone thinks theirs in the best and equally hates PHP devs a…

It's not recent. We've had memes for years about React devs using divs with click events instead of using links.

Re: If not React, then what?

#103

Post by baobabKoodaa »

dariusj18 wrote: post #101
baobabKoodaa wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> React is reported to be used by 39.5% of developers worldwide, while Vue.js is at 15.4%. The number of "apps" using just HTML+CSS is precisely zero, because those aren't "apps" they're documents. The options you present are: "either use a JS framework or don't use JavaScript at all". That's a false dichotomy. I've built plenty of interactive apps with JavaScript without using frameworks.

> I've built plenty of interactive apps with JavaScript without using frameworks And once you reach sufficient project complexity, you will end up with just another homegrown framework, with all the lessons learned by mature frameworks, left to be fixed over the next 5 years.

Oh yeah? And when will that happen? Because people have been throwing this argument at me since at least 2014. I still haven't slipped on a banana peel and accidentally fallen on a homegrown framework. You don't just create a framework by accident.

Re: If not React, then what?

#104

Post by pier25 »

emmanueloga_ wrote: post #58
simonw wrote: post #37

A fun thing about reading Alex is that you can tell he's had the same arguments over and over again for a decade now and he's frustrated with having to keep on making the same points and getting the exact same responses. Most of the people commenting on this piece won't have read this whole article (it's long, and internet attention spans are short). As a result, you'll find plenty of the comments here were exactly p…

If you try something for a decade and it doesn't work, maybe a change in style is necessary! An article exceeding 20 pages doesn't sound like the best persuasion strategy.

I doubt it's a matter of style. There's a lot of tribalism and irrational opinions around React.

Re: If not React, then what?

#105

Post by thunky »

quantadev wrote: post #72
simonw wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With this browser feature a navigation to a new page can look like only part of the page changes - without needing any JavaScript.

> can look like Yeah, but it ain't. lol.

It's easy for developers to forget who the "app" is actually for.

Users don't care how it was implemented or how nice the code looks, they just want it to work.

Re: If not React, then what?

#106

Post by pier25 »

thepasswordis wrote: post #10
QuiDortDine wrote: post #7

WOW this is a long article! Still waiting for the substance though... The only point I can agree with is that React is stupidly hard to learn. It feels like a tool made for aliens, though once you master it, it can be pretty efficient. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but the JS-free web isn't coming back. And if you're using modern JS, you might as well use React (or a similar tool). The user won't be able to tel…

What do you find hard to learn about react? I think a lot of tutorials are really bad, might be the problem.

If you need all this complexity to implement a setTimeout or setInterval in a React component I don't think you can really blame the tutorials.

https://overreacted.io/making-setinterval-declarative-with-r...

Re: If not React, then what?

#107

Post by dariusj18 »

baobabKoodaa wrote: post #103
dariusj18 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've built plenty of interactive apps with JavaScript without using frameworks And once you reach sufficient project complexity, you will end up with just another homegrown framework, with all the lessons learned by mature frameworks, left to be fixed over the next 5 years.

Oh yeah? And when will that happen? Because people have been throwing this argument at me since at least 2014. I still haven't slipped on a banana peel and accidentally fallen on a homegrown framework. You don't just create a framework by accident.

I don't have any context, but I do have trouble imagining that any of your projects have scale/complexity above brochure-ware if you haven't run into this.

Re: If not React, then what?

#108

Post by pier25 »

dimgl wrote: post #4

> Frameworkism isn't delivering. It isn't? I find React to be great to work with.

If React is so great how come Amazon isn't using it in their store?

I think last year an Amazon frontend engineer wrote some tweets explaining they tried React and it was too slow. So they keep using Java for SSR and sprinkle vanilla JS. They were still using jQuery until a couple of years ago and probably still are in some parts of their site.

Re: If not React, then what?

#110

Post by pier25 »

recursivedoubts wrote: post #66

If not react(ive, of some flavor), which is appropriate for some things, then hypermedia, which is appropriate for a different but overlapping set of things: https://htmx.org/essays/when-to-use-hypermedia/

React is not reactive. That's why it re-renders the whole vdom when you store state at root.
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