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This could be the argument against any framework (frontend, backend, animation, graphing, or anything else). At this point, I think you could back any of the ma

This could be the argument against any framework (frontend, backend, animation, graphing, or anything else). At this point, I think you could back any of the major 3 frontend frameworks and feel confident that your project is safe. I am not saying that something better isn't going to come along in the future. It almost certainly will... but React isn't going to disappear overnight. Just as jQuery is still being used and supported despite the fact that there is very little reason to use it anymore (most of it is natively supported with ES6/7/8 now) other than to support legacy projects. No one got screwed over by using jQuery. It made life a lot easier for developers for many years until many of its' features were developed into newer versions of Javascript. Many corporations have converted jQuery codebases to using React/Angular/Vue. It serves a far less valuable purpose now, but no one is worse off for having used it during those years. You really should be using one of these frameworks. If you aren't then you are doing A LOT of extra work that doesn't need to be recreated. There are mature frameworks that have figured it out for you and to not take advantage of that is only hurting yourself. They are most likely doing a better job at things like databinding than you will ever do yourself because they have teams of people all around the world contributing to it. Part of being a developer is knowing that you can't do it all yourself. The expectations we have make it impossible to sit down and write every line of code yourself and get a project done to the expectations of our employers, clients, or ourselves in a reasonable timeframe. I understand the fear of spending time learning something like Vue or React and then needing to learn something else in 2-3 years. But then that thing that replaces Vue/Angular/React in 3 years will only last itself for another 3 years. If you keep waiting for the permanent framework to come around then you will die waiting for it to happen. Part of being a developer is constantly learning and adapting to this ever-changing landscape. Right now React/Vue/Angular are pretty important in any front-end project on the web now and not learning them is only hurting yourself and your career.

AdrianB1 7y ago
Leaning assembler, Cobol and Turbo Pascal as my first languages, the "React isn't going to disappear overnight" made me smile: not overnight, but in the current times the fragmentation and short lifespan of every language or framework makes things worse, not better. There are bank systems still running on very old platforms and languages and these companies saved billions of dollars not changing every 3-5 years to the "framework of the day with free soda and a pancake". Btw, I kind of like Vue, just confirming the idea that frameworks may not be the best thing since sliced bread. They can be great with some conditions that are not met. Now, they are throwaway, like jQuery you correctly mentioned.
- earthboundkid 7y ago
  There is a great book from 1991 called "Programming as if People Mattered." What I took from it is that UI programming has always been a mess compared to backend, in part because the domain about people, which is just an intrinsically more complicated thing to deal with. Knuth created the Knuth shuffle and now no one needs to do that again. But every UI has to recreate what Fitt's Law means for their paradigm. It's a different kind of thing.
earthboundkid 7y ago
The other point I would add to what you wrote is that five to ten years ago, we were all going crazy watching new JS frameworks come out every other week, like Ember and Knockout (to say nothing of the Grunt vs. Webpack war). It was impossible to keep up with everything going on in JS. AMD → Require → Import. Callbacks → Promises → Async. There were a ton of language evolution changes going on. Today, things are much more stable. The big choice is React or Not React, and then Not React breaks down into the clones (Preact) and improvements (Vue, Svelte) over standard React. It's not the Wild West anymore. Similar concepts apply everywhere, and you're not taking the same kind of gamble by using a particular component framework that you were back then. The only old browser we still care about is IE11, and that's on a death clock. We're very close to entering the module JS Promise land. If web components ever gets sorted out, we'll even have compatibility of the different frameworks. It's becoming saner.

AdrianB1 7y ago

Leaning assembler, Cobol and Turbo Pascal as my first languages, the "React isn't going to disappear overnight" made me smile: not overnight, but in the current times the fragmentation and short lifespan of every language or framework makes things worse, not better. There are bank systems still running on very old platforms and languages and these companies saved billions of dollars not changing every 3-5 years to the "framework of the day with free soda and a pancake". Btw, I kind of like Vue, just confirming the idea that frameworks may not be the best thing since sliced bread. They can be great with some conditions that are not met. Now, they are throwaway, like jQuery you correctly mentioned.

earthboundkid 7y ago
There is a great book from 1991 called "Programming as if People Mattered." What I took from it is that UI programming has always been a mess compared to backend, in part because the domain about people, which is just an intrinsically more complicated thing to deal with. Knuth created the Knuth shuffle and now no one needs to do that again. But every UI has to recreate what Fitt's Law means for their paradigm. It's a different kind of thing.

earthboundkid 7y ago

The other point I would add to what you wrote is that five to ten years ago, we were all going crazy watching new JS frameworks come out every other week, like Ember and Knockout (to say nothing of the Grunt vs. Webpack war). It was impossible to keep up with everything going on in JS. AMD → Require → Import. Callbacks → Promises → Async. There were a ton of language evolution changes going on. Today, things are much more stable. The big choice is React or Not React, and then Not React breaks down into the clones (Preact) and improvements (Vue, Svelte) over standard React. It's not the Wild West anymore. Similar concepts apply everywhere, and you're not taking the same kind of gamble by using a particular component framework that you were back then. The only old browser we still care about is IE11, and that's on a death clock. We're very close to entering the module JS Promise land. If web components ever gets sorted out, we'll even have compatibility of the different frameworks. It's becoming saner.