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And jQuery is still used in lots of places without any problems AFAIK. Even if the React development team would stop the framework will for sure be around for

And jQuery is still used in lots of places without any problems AFAIK. Even if the React development team would stop the framework will for sure be around for a couple more years and receive at least security patches.

mst 4y ago
I've worked on webapps that are part jquery, part classic angular, part react, and part angularjs. My opinion of each of those parts has been primarily down to the developers, not the underlying choice of framework. Things that work in production last.
metadat 4y ago
jQuery has faded into the background, no longer interesting. React has too many sharp edges, it'll only be here until something shinier supercedes it.
- sebmellen 4y ago
  What sharp edges? (This is an honest, curious question.) I don't find many sharp edges in day-to-day React work. I say this having once been a very strong proponent of framework-less frontends, before trying Vue, then Svelte, and then settling on React.
- danachow 4y ago
  > jQuery has faded into the background, no longer interesting. It’s a mature, stable technology, still in wide use - and not really a competitor with react. That you claim it’s “no longer interesting” says more about your own preferences and ironically makes it sound that you are personally interested in the newest shiny fads - so I’m confused, what is your objection to react then? Angular isn’t exactly dead - and is a more apt comparison.
  - metadat 4y ago
    Never said I wasn't partial to shiny.
  - croes 4y ago
    What else do you need jQuery for? The most important parts are already included in the browser.
    - steve_adams_86 4y ago
      Honestly I bet a significant portion of the code I have maintained (and even some I’ve written) was reinventing a wheel someone didn’t know existed. Not even out of a desire to solve a problem, but simply not realizing it was done already. I suspect people still reach for jquery for similar reasons. They know it makes complicated stuff work, it’s reliable, they don’t need to think about the specifics of the problems it solves… As a result, they’re less likely to discover that it’s no longer necessary in the first place. They’ll just keep using it.
      - croes 4y ago
        The same will happen to react. React will become a victim of its success, because the more it is used the more likely its concepts will be integrated directly into the browser or ECMAScript
        mhoad 4y ago
        Maybe this is less obvious if you’re deep in the React ecosystem and nothing else but I’d argue that React is already in early stages of a death spiral for a few reasons. These mostly come down to 1. It’s no longer the fastest, in fact it’s barely competitive speed wise with many things that have come after it. 2. It’s architectured in such a way that it is fundamentally misaligned with the rest of many web standards (I.e the DOM) which made a lot of sense when it was released but is now a major liability. 3. It now has to ship around a lot of code that now lives natively inside the browser and is now rather bloated as a result compared to newer iterations such as Lit as mentioned in the article. Personally, I think it’s fatal in the sense that they have painted themselves into a very specific corner with no obvious engineering solution to get them back on the standards path. Its problems as a result aren’t really fixable without major architectural changes that would fundamentally change the project. On top of that they are only going to get actively worse over time as more things get moved into the browser and they are still stuck shipping a bunch of JS code to do the same thing. In short they are on a bad long term path with no clear off ramp. I wouldn’t start a major project in React in 2022 for something I wanted to be around in 5 years from now as a result.
  - steve_adams_86 4y ago
    I’m currently job searching and actually came across several mentions of jquery in job descriptions. It’s still alive! Edit: 3,700,000 downloads per week on npm alone. That’s not a complete or perfect representation of usage, but that’s a significant number
- oorza 4y ago
  Does React itself have edges, or do your issues derive from other parts of the ecosystem (Redux, styled-components, MobX, whatever)?
  - ralusek 4y ago
    React has edges. Hooks are an anti-pattern with all kinds of footguns. Suspense is also a crazy anti-pattern by literally throwing and catching errors as a means for communicating between parts of the framework. And this isn't an issue of me not understanding React or hooks, I would consider myself to be as expertly acquainted with hooks as it's possible to be. Now, do I still use React for everything? Yes. Do I prefer hooks to class components? Also, yes.
    - eyelidlessness 4y ago
      > Suspense is also a crazy anti-pattern by literally throwing and catching errors as a means for communicating between parts of the framework. Okay I can criticize React and its weird solutions until the cows come home, but this is a pretty weird one because it’s entirely an implementation detail. No one working with Suspense ever needs to know that’s how it works unless they’re building a library to be compatible with its behavior. Otherwise it’s just trivia.
      - branko_d 4y ago
        Wouldn't the debugger break on exception? So any exceptions used in "nonexceptional" situations have a potential to "pollute" the debugging experience? Admittedly, I haven't tried debugging React 18 yet, so I don't know if that actually happens in practice.
        eyelidlessness 4y ago
        Only if you set it to break on handled exceptions/Promise rejections. This isn’t new behavior in React 18, it’s been the mechanism used for Suspense since it was introduced. If you have used Suspense and haven’t had unexpected debugger pauses, that’s what you should expect going forward.
- semiquaver 4y ago
  jQuery was and continues to be just about as successful as it is possible for a project to be. The reason it’s no longer as widely used is because it essentially became part of the platform. Most of what jQuery does is now possible with platform APIs, and those APIs exist mostly thanks to jQuery proving their utility. A similar thing happened to CoffeeScript: no one uses it anymore because nearly all of its good ideas made their way into JavaScript itself.

mst 4y ago

I've worked on webapps that are part jquery, part classic angular, part react, and part angularjs. My opinion of each of those parts has been primarily down to the developers, not the underlying choice of framework. Things that work in production last.

metadat 4y ago

jQuery has faded into the background, no longer interesting. React has too many sharp edges, it'll only be here until something shinier supercedes it.

sebmellen 4y ago
What sharp edges? (This is an honest, curious question.) I don't find many sharp edges in day-to-day React work. I say this having once been a very strong proponent of framework-less frontends, before trying Vue, then Svelte, and then settling on React.
danachow 4y ago
> jQuery has faded into the background, no longer interesting. It’s a mature, stable technology, still in wide use - and not really a competitor with react. That you claim it’s “no longer interesting” says more about your own preferences and ironically makes it sound that you are personally interested in the newest shiny fads - so I’m confused, what is your objection to react then? Angular isn’t exactly dead - and is a more apt comparison.
- metadat 4y ago
  Never said I wasn't partial to shiny.
- croes 4y ago
  What else do you need jQuery for? The most important parts are already included in the browser.
  - steve_adams_86 4y ago
    Honestly I bet a significant portion of the code I have maintained (and even some I’ve written) was reinventing a wheel someone didn’t know existed. Not even out of a desire to solve a problem, but simply not realizing it was done already. I suspect people still reach for jquery for similar reasons. They know it makes complicated stuff work, it’s reliable, they don’t need to think about the specifics of the problems it solves… As a result, they’re less likely to discover that it’s no longer necessary in the first place. They’ll just keep using it.
    - croes 4y ago
      The same will happen to react. React will become a victim of its success, because the more it is used the more likely its concepts will be integrated directly into the browser or ECMAScript
      - mhoad 4y ago
        Maybe this is less obvious if you’re deep in the React ecosystem and nothing else but I’d argue that React is already in early stages of a death spiral for a few reasons. These mostly come down to 1. It’s no longer the fastest, in fact it’s barely competitive speed wise with many things that have come after it. 2. It’s architectured in such a way that it is fundamentally misaligned with the rest of many web standards (I.e the DOM) which made a lot of sense when it was released but is now a major liability. 3. It now has to ship around a lot of code that now lives natively inside the browser and is now rather bloated as a result compared to newer iterations such as Lit as mentioned in the article. Personally, I think it’s fatal in the sense that they have painted themselves into a very specific corner with no obvious engineering solution to get them back on the standards path. Its problems as a result aren’t really fixable without major architectural changes that would fundamentally change the project. On top of that they are only going to get actively worse over time as more things get moved into the browser and they are still stuck shipping a bunch of JS code to do the same thing. In short they are on a bad long term path with no clear off ramp. I wouldn’t start a major project in React in 2022 for something I wanted to be around in 5 years from now as a result.
- steve_adams_86 4y ago
  I’m currently job searching and actually came across several mentions of jquery in job descriptions. It’s still alive! Edit: 3,700,000 downloads per week on npm alone. That’s not a complete or perfect representation of usage, but that’s a significant number
oorza 4y ago
Does React itself have edges, or do your issues derive from other parts of the ecosystem (Redux, styled-components, MobX, whatever)?
- ralusek 4y ago
  React has edges. Hooks are an anti-pattern with all kinds of footguns. Suspense is also a crazy anti-pattern by literally throwing and catching errors as a means for communicating between parts of the framework. And this isn't an issue of me not understanding React or hooks, I would consider myself to be as expertly acquainted with hooks as it's possible to be. Now, do I still use React for everything? Yes. Do I prefer hooks to class components? Also, yes.
  - eyelidlessness 4y ago
    > Suspense is also a crazy anti-pattern by literally throwing and catching errors as a means for communicating between parts of the framework. Okay I can criticize React and its weird solutions until the cows come home, but this is a pretty weird one because it’s entirely an implementation detail. No one working with Suspense ever needs to know that’s how it works unless they’re building a library to be compatible with its behavior. Otherwise it’s just trivia.
    - branko_d 4y ago
      Wouldn't the debugger break on exception? So any exceptions used in "nonexceptional" situations have a potential to "pollute" the debugging experience? Admittedly, I haven't tried debugging React 18 yet, so I don't know if that actually happens in practice.
      - eyelidlessness 4y ago
        Only if you set it to break on handled exceptions/Promise rejections. This isn’t new behavior in React 18, it’s been the mechanism used for Suspense since it was introduced. If you have used Suspense and haven’t had unexpected debugger pauses, that’s what you should expect going forward.
semiquaver 4y ago
jQuery was and continues to be just about as successful as it is possible for a project to be. The reason it’s no longer as widely used is because it essentially became part of the platform. Most of what jQuery does is now possible with platform APIs, and those APIs exist mostly thanks to jQuery proving their utility. A similar thing happened to CoffeeScript: no one uses it anymore because nearly all of its good ideas made their way into JavaScript itself.