Progressive React

I've used React as a server-side templating language on many projects small and large. The main feature that makes React great for rendering HTML is higher-order components. In my experience any project of sufficient complexity starts to get ugly with a "regular" templating language. React encourages composition of small isolated components, which tends to result in code that is easier to understand and maintain.

Admittedly this works best on projects that don't require a massively complex interactive front-end, like news sites[0] and data reporting tools. But at some point you can just choose to start hydrating the interactive components in the browser without changing your back-end setup at all.

[0]: https://wildlyinaccurate.com/introducing-a-faster-bbc-news-f...

Same here with a Vernee Mix2

React isn't used for webSITES. It's used for web applications.

"Performance advocate" is a thing now? Things like that or "growth hacker" make me long for the peaceful days of "ruby rockstars" and "javascript ninjas"...

Never mind the fact that we're plowing the depths of functional programming, complex data structures and asynchronous wizardry just to make sure that displaying a few bytes of text and flat-shaded borders isn't too slow.

I don't remember GUI programming being that hard in the years before this. At least for these rather simple results. Getting a full DTP platform out on a 20 mhz machine with 4 MB of RAM required some advanced pattern wizardry, but most web UI patterns aren't that complicated. They just aren't helped by the client-server nature and Javascript being Javascript, as much as you wrap it up in the Emperor's new C# clothes.

> Sites have become bigger, more interactive and more complex and this number is still gradually increasing in an upward trend year after year.

Yeah, but is it useful complexity? The whole frontend scene often reeks of "bullshit job" syndrome. To get results customers could live without in a framework not re ally suited for it, we're developing complex tools, even more complex tools to package and deploy them and then have more coaches, trainers, video walkthrough creators and premature optimization providers than ever before.

I forgot about it for so long but I use it more and more lately.

It works great.