React is winning by default and slowing innovation • Hacker News Board

Re: React is winning by default and slowing innovation

#331

Post by echelon » Tue, Sep 16, 2025, 2:46 AM UTC

andrewmcwatters wrote: post #188

spankalee wrote: post #157

Web components are the way out of this trap. Every single framework that isn't React should be wholeheartedly supporting web components to make sure that they have access to a viable ecosystem of components and utilities without having to bootstrap an entire competitor to React and it's ecosystem. While a lot of people view web components as competitors to frameworks, they don't really have to be. The just define an…

I moved my entire business off React and now I don’t have to worry about tinkerers at Meta deciding to reinvent React every 2 years and tricking everyone by keeping the name again and again. Web components are fantastic. They are the real future.

React gets reinvented every year?

Are you talking about functional components instead of class components? What big changes am I missing here? It seems pretty static to me.

Re: React is winning by default and slowing innovation

#332

Post by taspeotis » Tue, Sep 16, 2025, 2:49 AM UTC

Less technical take than the other comments: I don’t care. React is good.

After suffering through JavaScript Framework Fatigue I was glad Create React App “won” for a bit until it was neglected so much a bunch of other bundling tools popped up.

Now the winners seem to be Next.js-but-try-to-ignore-the-Vercel-upsell and Vite.

I’m using Vite + React wherever I can and it just works.

I don’t need something else.

Re: React is winning by default and slowing innovation

#333

Post by georgeofjungle7 » Tue, Sep 16, 2025, 2:50 AM UTC

React didn't "win" because it’s the best, it won because it became the safe default. Everyone knows it, hiring is easy, and the ecosystem is huge. That’s great for stability but not so great for innovation—lots of teams never even look at lighter options like Svelte or Solid. React still works fine, but we probably lean on it more out of inertia than actual fit.

Re: React is winning by default and slowing innovation

#334

Post by mberning » Tue, Sep 16, 2025, 2:53 AM UTC

mrinterweb wrote: post #195

I would say react being the default expands to apps that normally would work perfectly server-side rendered. The insane amount of added boiler plate associated with writing an API, tests for the API (including contract tests), API documentation, API versioning concerns, deployment timing considerations; front-end API integration, front-end state management, front-end tests, API mocks, I feel like there's about 10 mor…

I agree 100% on the added cost and complexity. I think a lot of that gets masked by the boilerplate that makes it so easy to get started. Then they have their hooks in you and 6 months or a year later you are scratching your head and hiring “react developers” to help solve the problems you were trying to avoid.

Re: React is winning by default and slowing innovation

#335

Post by andrewstuart » Tue, Sep 16, 2025, 2:54 AM UTC

I’m a long time react developer, since nearly the beginning (13 years?), many projects more than 30 large and small, always been a vocal advocate.

I recently ditched React for Lit plus web components and couldn’t be happier.

Re: React is winning by default and slowing innovation

#336

Post by Quitschquat » Tue, Sep 16, 2025, 2:57 AM UTC

Our front end team doesn’t settle for ONE framework - they have several, all in the same application’s code base. There’s React, AngularJS, Angular, Vue (I think they started on that??) and even a bit of Jquery.

Is it an SPA? Well it’s an SPA per framework per page!

No one has the patience to port all the old code, and no one has any leadership to guide them. They’re just adding in flavor of the month and making it work somehow (kinda, well depends on who you talk to)

Re: React is winning by default and slowing innovation

#337

Post by Nathanba » Tue, Sep 16, 2025, 3:00 AM UTC

apsurd wrote: post #112

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…

+1 React DX is really great. It started really great and it got weird and bloated but it's still really great relative to the JS landscape hell. But, also yes, it's a pain in the ass and a frustrating kind of necessary evil. So there is room for improvements. Nextjs is a living hell. The ironic thing is AI makes it dramatically more tolerable to the point it's actually pretty good. But that can't be a good thing in t…

React DX is probably the worst DX of all frontend frameworks I've ever seen. All kinds of confusing concepts (hooks, memo, props passing, class style vs function style, an entire new "language" like JSX which you then first need to install an IDE extension for) and you cant even begin a react project most of the time without using some kind of react starter template because building this thing is so hugely complex that people just give up. Then you constantly run into issues of double rendering with reactjs which is quite hard to debug. I was hoping for something tiny like https://www.arrow-js.com/ taking off but the creator doesn't really work on it.

Re: React is winning by default and slowing innovation

#338

Post by iammrpayments » Tue, Sep 16, 2025, 3:00 AM UTC

tshaddox wrote: post #87

This is mostly just a complaint about how good React is. It's so good that it's difficult for the technical benefits of alternatives to outweigh the social benefits of choosing React. Note that this is neither a major compliment to React's technical merits nor a criticism of React's competitors. In fact, I don't even disagree with the author on some of his claims, such as: > React is no longer winning by technical me…

You’re assuming webdevs are rational creatures which in my experience is far from truth, since they easily fall for human biases traps such as “social proof” and “authority”.

Re: React is winning by default and slowing innovation

#339

Post by _heimdall » Tue, Sep 16, 2025, 3:06 AM UTC

bythreads wrote: post #315

_heimdall wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That approach passes values in JS rather than the DOM, right? I read the go comment as talking specifically about DOM attributes which can only be strings (well, you can have boolean attributes as well). Web components can be passed objects in JS, but its news to me if that is available in HTML.

Neither can react

I didn't say it can, I never actually mentioned react at all here.

Re: React is winning by default and slowing innovation

#340

Post by iammrpayments » Tue, Sep 16, 2025, 3:10 AM UTC

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…

Mcdonalds is really good. Even if the cost is an extra few pounds and increased chance of getting cancer.

If Mcdonalds starts taking a backseat, it’ll because its no longer really good. And, to be fair: I’ve started to see this happen. Mcdonalds & Coca-Cola have totally taken over the food industry world, and they’ve proven to make quite poor nutritional decisions. All great empires are destroyed from the inside, not out, and I think its possible Coca cola could do this to Mcdonalds. But also even as Coca-Cola seppukus itself, people will likely just fallback to Mcdonalds on Pepsi (or, there’s Pepsi Zero Sugar that’s I think still under development, but might end up being big).