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React is winning by default and slowing innovation

lorenstew.art

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Re: React is winning by default and slowing innovation

#131

Post by fuzzy2 »

Is it winning? Of course, everyone has a different perspective on the software industry. From my (super limited!) view, Angular is winning. And for the first time in almost 10 years, I can now confidently say: Rightly so. “Components become targeted DOM operations”? Yes. “Updates flow through signals”? Yes. (Dunno about Qwik, never heard of it.) It was a long and arduous journey, but they pulled through. Also, it is rather batteries-included.

I encourage everyone to give it a whirl. Zone.js is no longer needed and with Signals and Standalone Components it is now proper good. Developer experience, too, with Vite and esbuild.

Re: React is winning by default and slowing innovation

#132

Post by locallost »

The argument about looking at technical fit doesn't come through. Very few people, "professionals", view it like that. Instead almost everyone defaults to their stack and views it as mandatory. I've been working for a long time, and I'd like to think I can manage to learn a new framework (and like most people, I implement something as a small project to learn something new occasionally), but in reality if I don't work with React every day professionally for n years, most people will not look at my work. In certain cases "the right tool for the right job" might make sense, but I'd argue that it really doesn't matter here, as all of these tools do the same job. If some do it better than the others they should win out, but the term better is very broad and complex, to the point it was successfully argued that worse is better.

I don't like to criticize too much any more, but I think in general this is a poor article. It doesn't really tell us anything other than latching onto someone else's opinion -- Rich Harris told us virtual dom is pure overhead, ok, but what's your opinion -- or referring to technical debt with React, as if it doesn't exist in every other project, or vaguely complaining about suffocating something.

I mean the job of these frameworks is to update a page when you change state. That's it. If the world has decided React is good enough in all or many aspects of using it, so be it. If The Guardian rewrote something in Svelte and nobody noticed the improvement that apparently objectively exist, what's the point?

Re: React is winning by default and slowing innovation

#133

Post by bingabingabinga »

estimator7292 wrote: post #94

The first programming language I learned was Java as a teenager. When I started actually programming as an adult, I used C#. As my career has gone on, it's been on a very definite path down the layers of abstraction and now I write C and assembly. I just got a new job and my first task is fixing up a vibe coded react native app. Holy hell I have never hated programming more than I do now. The absolute mess that is ty…

[dead]

Re: React is winning by default and slowing innovation

#134

Post by b_e_n_t_o_n »

pverheggen wrote: post #67
CharlieDigital wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, React's problem is that it's the inverse of how HTML and JavaScript works in terms of how to handle callbacks. Of the major UI frameworks, it is the only one with this quality (Vue, Svelte, Angular, Solid, etc. use signals). This inverted behavior is the cause of most of the pain and footguns in React and React Hooks because the way state behaves in a React component is not the way state behaves in any othe…

Technically in React, the reactive callback is still the event handler. It's a two-step process where your event handler is evaluated first, then re-evaluates the component tree which changed as a result of the handler. In your JSFiddle example, if you modify `onChange` to print a console log instead of setting state, you'll see that it doesn't run the component function again. So really, the key difference between R…

Yeah that's a pretty good way of putting it. In Vue et al, the script tag is a constructor and the template is a render function. In react, you just write a render function and use hooks to define stuff that otherwise would have been in the constructor.

Re: React is winning by default and slowing innovation

#135

Post by Glyptodon »

bangaroo wrote: post #107

realistically i've worked at very few companies whose delivery is held back meaningfully by the framework something is built in. when there's friction, it's much more likely to come from poor planning, or constantly adding more functionality without stopping to reconsider architecture, or one of a thousand more organizational issues. the innovation delivered by basically anyone working in software is extremely rarely…

I wouldn't say I've worked at companies where the framework is exactly what holds back deliverability, but I have worked in plenty of environments where a complex front end is multiplying the work required to get a basic CRUD product out without a ton of benefit.

Re: React is winning by default and slowing innovation

#136

Post by timeon »

827a wrote: post #102

React is winning because its really good. Even if the cost is an extra few milliseconds of render time and few extra hours of dev time figuring out things like hook dependencies. If React starts taking a backseat, it'll be because its no longer really good. And, to be fair: I've started to see this happen. Next & Vercel have totally taken over the React world, and they've proven to make quite poor architectural decis…

> Even if the cost is an extra few milliseconds of render time

These things are adding up. Web would be much more pleasant without React. There are many better options out there.

Re: React is winning by default and slowing innovation

#137

Post by Tade0 »

My only real gripe with React is that since it's "just a library", no two React projects are the same, as every concern has a palette of libraries addressing it to choose from. I mean, even the router has alternative implementations.

Every additional dependency is a cost associated with onboarding, maintenance and security issues.

Re: React is winning by default and slowing innovation

#138

Post by epolanski »

Imho react is to FE development what C++ is to games programming.

And I'm not saying this in a good sense.

In particular their developers demonstrate the same tendencies:

- unwillingness to leave behind all the years of experiences they've built on it. I'm not saying one should just for the sake of changing, but if you encounter certain problems, you should at least consider it

- unwillingness to really try more modern alternatives

- willingness to criticize any alternative, even stating plain wrong things about those. This also includes judging alternatives for the state they were 5/6 years ago, often on very brief experiences

- ability to deflect criticism to their favorite toy with a "skill issues" argument. Oh, it's very easy to squeeze performance, you only need to know how to get good at using useMemo, useCallback, useEffect, etc. Of course, it ain't React being the wrong tool for the problem, or having made design choices that don't fit the problem at hand. Nope, has to be skill issues.

Honestly, every time I read "React is better because X", I know there's just too much engineering nuance missing to have constructive discussions.

Re: React is winning by default and slowing innovation

#139

Post by s1mplicissimus »

827a wrote: post #102

React is winning because its really good. Even if the cost is an extra few milliseconds of render time and few extra hours of dev time figuring out things like hook dependencies. If React starts taking a backseat, it'll be because its no longer really good. And, to be fair: I've started to see this happen. Next & Vercel have totally taken over the React world, and they've proven to make quite poor architectural decis…

funny you should mention react on vite - i migrated a web-app to that setup ~3 years ago and never even considered looking back. react is still a trusty workhorse that assists me in getting things done, the ecosystem is rich (i'll take the varying quality as a given for one this size). I've been toying around with next a couple years ago, followed their development for some time, then decided they are not doing what I need. Isometric rendering turns out to sound way better than it actually is. The pain doesn't come from different programming languages on front- and backend, it comes from the difficulty of reconciling client state, server state, security etc. I actually find it helpful to have specialized languages for each side, rather than having to figure out for each piece of code wether its supposed to run on my server or in the browser.

Re: React is winning by default and slowing innovation

#140

Post by giveita »

827a wrote: post #102

React is winning because its really good. Even if the cost is an extra few milliseconds of render time and few extra hours of dev time figuring out things like hook dependencies. If React starts taking a backseat, it'll be because its no longer really good. And, to be fair: I've started to see this happen. Next & Vercel have totally taken over the React world, and they've proven to make quite poor architectural decis…

Maybe us backenders help. If I need to do front end I learn as little as possible. React does the job. It could have been Angular that ended up being in the boring throne, and I would have said just use Angular. Just use what the world uses!
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