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React Is the New IBM (2023)

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Re: React Is the New IBM (2023)

#11

Post by ethanbond »

qsort wrote: post #3

I see the point but I think the article is overplaying its hand. Sacrificing performance for a cleaner programming model is a reasonable tradeoff, it's weird that it's being criticized as though it were a matter of principle. I'm very much a backend person and I don't like React either -- as far as I'm concerned raw HTML on a webpage as God intended peak UI -- but if you're writing full webapps you're going to need s…

It's just a fairly lengthy fall into a trap that many, many programmers fall into: detaching their craft from the business purpose it serves.

A webpage rendering Xms faster has negative value if it e.g. took 3 months longer to hire the programmer responsible for writing it, or if that programmer costs $100,000/yr more, or if training them to proficiency took 6 months, etc etc. The advantages of well-known frameworks are very real to the business, they just offend some programmers' sensibilities which should be simply ignored.

In any case, the IBM analog is also weird/wrong. The takeaway from IBM has to do with bureaucratic decision-making and especially the principal-agent conflict between people who buy systems like IBM and people who have to use them. I have never seen a similar dynamic be responsible for the decision to use React. There is no React salesperson wining and dining the C-suite.

Re: React Is the New IBM (2023)

#12

Post by mrits »

azangru wrote: post #4
smallpipe wrote: post #2

Dismissing a compiler improvement is weird. Facebook has presumably millions of lines of React everywhere. Legacy tech is a thing, and most tech is legacy. Usability and familiarity matter. The tech is a collateral of the business, and it doesn't matter as long as it works. Compiler "hack" or not, the business doesn't care, the business is about revenue and maintenance burden.

> Legacy tech is a thing, and most tech is legacy. I guess the question we typically get to ask ourselves is this: is there any good reason to choose React for a new project in .

I just chose it and having a fun time with nextjs.

Re: React Is the New IBM (2023)

#14

Post by SantiagoElf »

I never, ever bothered to learn React.

Stuck with .NET/C#.

If I have to write web UI, I use Angular, Blazor, and Razor MVC.

React never made any sense to me, and the more I saw people using it, the more it reconfirmed my belief that it was a no-go.

Usually, people win if they do the opposite of what the mass is doing :)

Re: React Is the New IBM (2023)

#15

Post by Tabular-Iceberg »

smallpipe wrote: post #2

Dismissing a compiler improvement is weird. Facebook has presumably millions of lines of React everywhere. Legacy tech is a thing, and most tech is legacy. Usability and familiarity matter. The tech is a collateral of the business, and it doesn't matter as long as it works. Compiler "hack" or not, the business doesn't care, the business is about revenue and maintenance burden.

I don’t think it’s dismissing compiler improvements, I think it’s dismissing compiler astronautics when there already is a good, performant solution at hand.

Though to be fair to Facebook, in 2004 there were no good web languages. The choice was between weird enterprise stuff like WebObjects, JavaEE and ColdFusion, or small pragmatic languages with clumsy implementations like Python, Ruby and PHP.

Re: React Is the New IBM (2023)

#16

Post by deliriumchn »

another month, another post complaining about react and claiming that its slow and hard... But its not hard, at all. Learning core react functinoality (which will let you make complex apps on its own) takes 2-3 hours (if you're a slow reader), and performance is fine. 99% of the time its not the tool, its the app's code being slow, and when its slow, its easy to fix most of the time

Re: React Is the New IBM (2023)

#18

Post by TheMiddleMan »

> React’s logical model of recreating the UI on change of state is incredibly difficult to do right at scale. By that I mean that as applications and teams get larger, the chances of writing components with side effects increases due to differing levels of skill, knowledge, experience, and simply having a larger body of code to cover.

This is a problem with all UI libraries. React at least makes it difficult to write components with side effects.

Re: React Is the New IBM (2023)

#19

Post by code_biologist »

azangru wrote: post #4
smallpipe wrote: post #2

Dismissing a compiler improvement is weird. Facebook has presumably millions of lines of React everywhere. Legacy tech is a thing, and most tech is legacy. Usability and familiarity matter. The tech is a collateral of the business, and it doesn't matter as long as it works. Compiler "hack" or not, the business doesn't care, the business is about revenue and maintenance burden.

> Legacy tech is a thing, and most tech is legacy. I guess the question we typically get to ask ourselves is this: is there any good reason to choose React for a new project in .

Yes, if an aspect of React’s ecosystem makes it easier to deliver the project.

For example React Native seems like a nifty way to deliver mobile app functionality with less code/functionality duplication and simpler staffing. I might be out of the loop, is there something similar building on React alternatives?

Certainly React is not the only option these days, thank god.

Re: React Is the New IBM (2023)

#20

Post by rbanffy »

I know at least one CTO who was fired for picking IBM. And, BTW, nobody should ever be fired for making an honest mistake. He listened to the wrong advice and acquired lots of gear that was a poor fit for our needs.

Or, as Thomas J. Watson Sr. allegedly said:

“Recently, I was asked if I was going to fire an employee who made a mistake that cost the company $600,000. No, I replied, I just spent $600,000 training him. Why would I want somebody to hire his experience?”

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