Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

React is winning by default and slowing innovation

lorenstew.art

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

461–470 of 866 posts

Re: React is winning by default and slowing innovation

#461

Post by LandR »

cranberryturkey wrote: post #437
actinium226 wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I humbly disagree. I've never built a highly interactive application with React, only simple sites where the guys before me chose React, so I can't speak to its relative strengths or weaknesses there, but I've found that it doesn't scale down very well to simple sites. For a simple sign-in page, it's easy to just store state in the DOM and use a element to send the credentials, and maybe a little JS for the password…

Look, just because you're the most popular doesn't mean you're the best, did you fools not learn anything from high school? Look at Microsoft in the 90s-2000s -- terrible fucking software, but it was by far the most widely used.

Front end developers and not learning from mistakes of the past...

I sense a theme here.

Re: React is winning by default and slowing innovation

#462

Post by lambdaone »

"Slowing innovation across the frontend ecosystem" sounds like a really good idea to me. Frontend innovation is largely vanity churn at this point, and means that any web frontend project left fallow for more than six months is effectively dead, since you need to constantly update for security reasons, and the API and the dependencies are constantly changing, you are doomed to rewrite your application forever. The only sensible motivation I can see for this is the desire to create jobs for life for frontend devs.

Compare this with things like X11 or Win32, where 20 year old programs will still work, or even more so systems like OS/360 and its successors, where 50 year old programs will still work.

I'm not a fan of React - to put it mildly - but something mediocre, but stable, is vastly preferable to the rapidly mutating hellscape of constantly rewritten frameworks driven by innovation for innovation's sake.

Re: React is winning by default and slowing innovation

#463

Post by noodletheworld »

_heimdall wrote: post #441
noodletheworld wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then why dont you pick jquery? Its easy and well known, even now. The answer I see is that react is technically good enough. Using boring technology doesnt mean using the technically most advanced thing. It means picking something safe and stable.

Why would you need jquery today? What can it do that native browser APIs can't?

Jquery is the old default for web apps from before people decided they wanted react.

What can it do that others cant? Literally nothing.

That didnt and does not stop it from being used for connivence sake.

The point is: if its not about the technical quality; why are we not still using it now?

Re: React is winning by default and slowing innovation

#464

Post by Xenoamorphous »

_heimdall wrote: post #297
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…

I have been a part of quite a few tech stack decisions at various companies and startups. I have literally never heard an argument made for react that included merits of the framework itself. The decision was always based on a combination for familiarity, ability to hire for eng roles, and the ecosystem.

> I have been a part of quite a few tech stack decisions at various companies and startups. I have literally never heard an argument made for react that included merits of the framework itself. The decision was always based on a combination for familiarity, ability to hire for eng roles, and the ecosystem.

Couple of thoughts regarding this:

* A competing alternative would have to have really big benefits from a technical standpoint to outweigh the React advantages that you mentioned.

* When exploring alternatives IMO the burden of proving that something is better lies within the person/people that want to go with an alternative option. React is the de facto standard these days so it shouldn't be a matter of "why React" but "why not React".

Re: React is winning by default and slowing innovation

#465

Post by LAC-Tech »

apsurd wrote: post #264
LAC-Tech wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A front end web framework with global state management should be a last resort for a website. Coming out of the gate with it is just ridiculous IMO. Most peoples websites are just not that complex. There's like an escalation ladder in my mind: - just write HTML - statically generate the HTML - dynamically generate the HTML - dynamically generate the HTML at a smaller granularity (HTMX et all) - augment your HTML with…

i'm bookmarking this comment. great cascading list! agree as a 10+ year customer facing product person doing tons of react.

Thank you for your kind words :) I used to be very anti-react, but I realised my real issue is it was just too high an escalation for simple problems.

Re: React is winning by default and slowing innovation

#466

Post by friendzis »

whoknowsidont wrote: post #341

React isn't winning by default. It's been so effective, so well designed that it's lived long enough to become the defacto standard... and the villian. Claiming React is slowing innovation is an absolutely bonkers take when React is essentially the only sane stable choice in a sea of "me too" frameworks and libraries with conflicting and confusing design choices.

In what way React is anywhere near well designed?

Look over quick starts of React and Angular, for example. One is a well structured application, the other is a spaghetti script, all held by magic and conventions.

If you recall the (in)famous "PHP: a fractal of bad design", React basically ticks every box in this rant and then some. It's not surprise knowing it's origins, but still.

The reasons React has got traction are the same reasons PHP got traction or web frontend dev in general and have nothing to do with being well designed: it tries to "render" something visible, which makes early adoption much more interactive (hey, I've changed one line and now instead of 15 errors I have 25 different ones and the text moved!), however at the cost of any shot at long term maintainability. Before someone comes and tells me React is just a tool and you can make good products with any tools I encourage you to look at all the headliner star projects by Meta: if they cannot make websites in React at least somewhat functional and stable, no one can. Google headliners built with Angular, for all their warts, are at least for the most part functional.

Re: React is winning by default and slowing innovation

#467

Post by kqr »

There are other barriers to adoption besides network effects. I showed in another comment downthread how easy it is to inject React into just the parts of an otherwise static web page that need enhanced interactivity. Svelte and Qwik need to be compiled – if you don't already have a full modern frontend build chain, that's a huge added maintenance cost.

Solid, to their credit, does have some support for using it in non-compiled environments: https://github.com/solidjs/solid/tree/main/packages/solid/ht...

Re: React is winning by default and slowing innovation

#468

Post by ixxie »

Narew wrote: post #439

I'm not a front end dev and only use JS stuff time to time for small personal project. There is so much JS framework out there that appear and disappear so fast. I don't know if we can call it innovation. I have the impression they just reinvent the wheel with so little value added. I prefer to keep on React at least it will not disappear the next time I will do some change on my project.

It's really hard to be sure, but my pet theory is that frontend tech has been rapidly evolving since it had to solve some real problems that are relatively new at scale:

- Work with reactive variables

- Combine three different languages

- Write modular code

- Enable highly response designs

The target platform (the web) doesn't natively support all of these things elegantly, and maybe for good reasons.

I've got the feeling that frontend frameworks are starting to converge to some consensus on some of these things (e.g. signals), and I hope the next decade will be more stable than the last.

Re: React is winning by default and slowing innovation

#469

Post by lopatin »

Narew wrote: post #439

I'm not a front end dev and only use JS stuff time to time for small personal project. There is so much JS framework out there that appear and disappear so fast. I don't know if we can call it innovation. I have the impression they just reinvent the wheel with so little value added. I prefer to keep on React at least it will not disappear the next time I will do some change on my project.

grug say ok to react

Re: React is winning by default and slowing innovation

#470

Post by likium »

ibash wrote: post #428
rimunroe wrote: post #44

> Hooks addressed class component pain but introduced new kinds of complexity: dependency arrays, stale closures, and misused effects. Even React’s own docs emphasize restraint: “You Might Not Need an Effect”. Server Components improve time-to-first-byte, but add architectural complexity and new failure modes. There are a lot of valid criticisms of React, but I don't think this is one of them. These problems are not…

Disagree. Hooks took one problem and reshaped it, they didn’t actually solve the problem. With hooks you still need to think about lifecycle, side effects, and state, but the syntax changes. The real solution is overall application design and thinking through architecture, but unfortunately that’s higher effort than “just use hooks bro”.

Agreed but hooks did solve composability. It’s easier to implement very complex handling, like drag and drop interactions.
Post reply on HN