231–240 of 866 posts
IIRC it was quite a fight for react, it wasn’t a slam dunk out of the gate.
Was there? By 2016 it felt like nearly 80% of frontend development was happening in react. Even startups in central FL in 2015 were all in on react then. That's barely 4ish years from first introduction. That's quite fast in software adoption.
Rewrite the first paragraph replacing "React" by "HTML". React is mostly HTML driven by data. "HTML killed front end innovation". Well that enabled standards to build real use cases on it with a common ground. Before React, the Web world was a mess. In 2025, you have lots of frameworks to explore. React did not kill front end innovation at all, it just became a standard that gives more common understanding to buildin…
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…
Usually I write a few helper functions to streamline working with elements, attributes, and registration of element + CSS. But even without those, I think this approach provides a good level of simplicity without introducing libraries or frameworks.
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…
> if the cost is an extra few milliseconds of render time and few extra hours of dev time That is very optimistic. Most React projects never get to the optimization stage, and end up with seconds of rendering and transition delays that significantly harm UX. And the amount of time spent battling hooks, re-renders, compatibility issues, etc amounts to hundreds of hours over the course of a medium-sized project, thousa…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The same is true everywhere in tech, I swear. "What if we abstracted away X?" My dude, you're already operating on like five levels of abstractions, and you haven't the slightest clue how any of them work. The answer isn't another abstraction, it's learning how computers actually operate.
Why? I don't care how the chrome engine works. I care about building a great CX and making money
I couldn’t care less how much customers like something; what matters to me is if it’s technically perfect.
This is also why I will never be happy at any job, because it turns out technical perfection doesn’t pay the bills.
I also tend to see a lot of the "left-pad" phenomenon in such codebases. Large swathes of the "React ecosystem" are libraries whose relevant functionality you could've implemented yourself in a few minutes (and you'd probably have been better off doing so, to avoid the dependency hell). And there are also large swathes that only exist to work around deficiencies within React itself.
Hireability is a somewhat stronger argument, though this is situational - sometimes you're hiring "tactically" and truly need someone who can hit the ground running in your codebase as soon as they arrive, but oftentimes it's completely fine for new hires to be unfamiliar with your language or framework of choice, and gradually onboard to it on the job.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't really recommend isomorphic environments, but if it's your cup of tea, Tanstack Start is making a lot of progress. It removes all of the magic and misdirection of Nextjs and just provides a good light alternative.
AFAIK "TanStack" doesn't support RSCs? That's a deal breaker for me. Also the guy named his framework after himself, it can't be good.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why? I don't care how the chrome engine works. I care about building a great CX and making money
This is the difference, and why we can never understand each other. I couldn’t care less how much customers like something; what matters to me is if it’s technically perfect. This is also why I will never be happy at any job, because it turns out technical perfection doesn’t pay the bills.
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…
If react adds extra render time and extra dev time, what is it saving?
While sympathizing with author's concerns, if "innovation slowing" means we get to use the same mainstream framework for a few more years there will be pretty positive consequences from that.
If it lasts I'd see many people willing to dip their toe into front end dev again.