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If not React, then what?

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Re: If not React, then what?

#171

Post by andybak »

eawgewag wrote: post #156

I honestly think this conversation gets overly complex because we fail to define the kind of websites we are talking about. These are my definitions, so I'll just share them upfront: - a web site -- which has low interactivity requirements. Blogs, documentation sites, etc, go here. A vast majority of websites are in this bucket - a web application -- which has high interactivity requirements. Things like Gmail, Linea…

He spent a chunk of the article defining exactly those terms.

I know we're not supposed to accuse people of not rtfa but sometimes it's a struggle.

Re: If not React, then what?

#172

Post by zmmmmm »

MarcelOlsz wrote: post #145
lopatin wrote: post #143

I'll continue using vanilla React, for the same reason I use Java: it's reached the coveted "boring technology" status where it's mature, stable, fast enough, and has a huge community, resources, and ecosystem. I won't let go of that easily. However, this is a pretty epic rant nonetheless.

You're going to love Vue. Took me about half an hour to switch and be productive and never looked back. I've switched multiple teams/devs to it as well. If not just for the devtools experience. I switched right before all the messy React stuff started getting released.

I'm having trouble forgiving Vue for the backwards compatibility issues and short support period from Vue 2.x => Vue 3.x. I'm now faced with unnecessary cost to upgrade line of business apps built with Vue that in full maintenance mode but now have critical security vulnerabilities popping up in scanners with no way to fix them other than large scale code migration. I saw they are now dropping support for Vue 2 even in the DevTools, so even migration is going to be harder, if we can't easily introspect the pages we are migrating.

I'm suspecting they are going to drop backwards compatibility again in the near future by deprecating support for the options API - leaving me with another headache.

Re: If not React, then what?

#173

Post by andybak »

claytongulick wrote: post #151
pier25 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

What's the beef with clickable divs? Are you referring to just the case where they're misused for top level navigation? Or more generically? It's pretty common to not want the default behavior of an A tag, so instead of the e.preventDefault(); e.stopImmediatePropagation(); dance, a clickable div works great. Non deep-linked sub-nav (tabs, etc...) come to mind. Or maybe I'm hooked into a router and I need to pass some…

Do you religiously check that you haven't broken ctl-click, middle click or "right click/open in new tab"? I come across a site - sorry I meant "app" - almost every day that breaks this.

Just use and you don't have to.

Re: If not React, then what?

#174

Post by andybak »

Kuraj wrote: post #157
claytongulick wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the beef with clickable divs? Are you referring to just the case where they're misused for top level navigation? Or more generically? It's pretty common to not want the default behavior of an A tag, so instead of the e.preventDefault(); e.stopImmediatePropagation(); dance, a clickable div works great. Non deep-linked sub-nav (tabs, etc...) come to mind. Or maybe I'm hooked into a router and I need to pass some…

Every time I can't middle click a link to open it in a new tab I want to punch a wall honestly

This. As community support for an app Steam comments is my current target of hate.

Re: If not React, then what?

#175

Post by root_axis »

pier25 wrote: post #126
goodoldneon wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do not base your company’s tech decisions on FAANG companies unless your company is a FAANG company. Your challenges are likely very different from theirs

You're missing the point of my comment. Someone is contesting that "frameworkism isn't delivering" when we have objective data to prove that it is in fact not delivering. The Amazon store is just a good example because there's a lot of data about it, not because it's FAANG.

You just picked Amazon arbitrarily because it supports your argument, but there are many more counter examples where react is used, so what's your point?

Re: If not React, then what?

#176

Post by danjl »

chimpanzee wrote: post #162
eawgewag wrote: post #156

I honestly think this conversation gets overly complex because we fail to define the kind of websites we are talking about. These are my definitions, so I'll just share them upfront: - a web site -- which has low interactivity requirements. Blogs, documentation sites, etc, go here. A vast majority of websites are in this bucket - a web application -- which has high interactivity requirements. Things like Gmail, Linea…

> React is better at anything else at making [a web application] Mithril.js beats it in my opinion. I’m sure many developers would argue in favor of other libraries over React. React is simply the most popular.

Being the most popular comes with big benefits. There are far more articles about how to support issues that you run into, and many more libraries available for your use. While other libraries maybe "better"in some cases, giving up the support of the large community is a big cost.

Re: If not React, then what?

#177

Post by andybak »

pier25 wrote: post #104
emmanueloga_ wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I strongly dislike React on pragmatic and philosophical grounds. I don't feel particularly irrational.

Re: If not React, then what?

#178

Post by MarcelOlsz »

aerhardt wrote: post #166
MarcelOlsz wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're going to love Vue. Took me about half an hour to switch and be productive and never looked back. I've switched multiple teams/devs to it as well. If not just for the devtools experience. I switched right before all the messy React stuff started getting released.

But why would OP or I switch away from React when we believe it's mature, stable, fast enough, and has a huge community, resources, and ecosystem? And perhaps most important of all: it's the tool we know.

I only responded because they said they're using vanilla React which for some reason in my head instantly translated to "old version of React before it started sucking", and replied accordingly.

>But why would OP or I switch away from React when we believe it's mature, stable, fast enough, and has a huge community, resources, and ecosystem?

Yeah fair enough.

Re: If not React, then what?

#179

Post by smrtinsert »

lopatin wrote: post #143

I'll continue using vanilla React, for the same reason I use Java: it's reached the coveted "boring technology" status where it's mature, stable, fast enough, and has a huge community, resources, and ecosystem. I won't let go of that easily. However, this is a pretty epic rant nonetheless.

Java is still getting great support and great new features every release while maintaining backward compat

Re: If not React, then what?

#180

Post by andybak »

goosejuice wrote: post #53
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…

Maybe because they start with this tldr: > In short, nobody should start a new project in the 2020s based on React. Full stop. Good arguments here but the dogma doesn't help.

Sometimes you have to fight fire with fire. The fact that some people reach for React before even considering what they are building requires some corrective polemics.
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