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I've been coding my front-ends in React for 5 or 6 years. I don't have any of the problems you describe, I can also pick up old projects and run them without mu

I've been coding my front-ends in React for 5 or 6 years. I don't have any of the problems you describe, I can also pick up old projects and run them without much problem. There was the change from classes to hooks but I still remember classes fairly well. Then there's been NextJS which I've picked up in like a weekend. That's it. There are new frameworks popping up all the time. Some look very interesting. But React has been around since 2013 and it's a world standard. I agree that JS/TS tooling is largely a mess, it's why I don't like JS/TS back-ends other than maybe some simple NextJS API routes, or an Express server with something like three files. But on the front-end, React CRA and NextJS (with TypeScript) both have served most of my needs with just a few CLI commands and minimal config. I rarely have the need to meddle with the tooling and I can get up and running in seconds.

jiggawatts 4y ago
"I haven't died playing russian roulette, you should try it too." The general experience across the industry in a statistical sense is that JavaScript frameworks are a tyre fire best avoided. I'm yet to see a JS app that doesn't need constant maintenance to remain compilable. Meanwhile, the ASP.NET ecosystem had like one significant breaking change since like... 2002.
- JackMorgan 4y ago
  JavaScript itself is entirely backwards compatible back to 2002. If anything, I'd argue raw .NET is far worse than raw JS for backwards compatibility, because .NET has depreciated entire languages like VB6. To compare something like React to .NET, let's look at .NET libraries and frameworks. For example: Sliverlight, WebForms, WPF, WCF SOAP, old versions of EF, or old versions of MVC. It's not been pretty for .NET, and you're in a bad place if you still have a Sliverlight app in 2022 because it only runs on IE11. Every language and library suffers/benefits from the onward march of progress. It's disingenuous to claim JS is the only ecosystem that has significant churn.
  - cies 4y ago
    Now lets compare it to Qt and QML? They seem to be pretty stable GUI libs
  - pjmlp 4y ago
    WebForms, WPF and EF 6 have been ported to .NET Core. WCF althought not initially supported, the industry has made enough pressure, that most of it is now available on WCF Core. SOAP libraries still exist. Thanks to the magic of WebAssembly, you can port that 2002 Silverlight application to OpenSilver, and use it on any modern browser.
miyuru 4y ago
I was given a old unmaintained react project to build a pipeline and the only way to run it was on node 12. It would not even build on latest node versions.
- arcturus17 4y ago
  Would this be out of the realm of possibility if you inherited, say, an old Django or .Net project?
- SwiftyBug 4y ago
  That's absolutely expected. Good news is that it's trivial to install whichever Node version you like.

jiggawatts 4y ago

"I haven't died playing russian roulette, you should try it too." The general experience across the industry in a statistical sense is that JavaScript frameworks are a tyre fire best avoided. I'm yet to see a JS app that doesn't need constant maintenance to remain compilable. Meanwhile, the ASP.NET ecosystem had like one significant breaking change since like... 2002.

JackMorgan 4y ago
JavaScript itself is entirely backwards compatible back to 2002. If anything, I'd argue raw .NET is far worse than raw JS for backwards compatibility, because .NET has depreciated entire languages like VB6. To compare something like React to .NET, let's look at .NET libraries and frameworks. For example: Sliverlight, WebForms, WPF, WCF SOAP, old versions of EF, or old versions of MVC. It's not been pretty for .NET, and you're in a bad place if you still have a Sliverlight app in 2022 because it only runs on IE11. Every language and library suffers/benefits from the onward march of progress. It's disingenuous to claim JS is the only ecosystem that has significant churn.
- cies 4y ago
  Now lets compare it to Qt and QML? They seem to be pretty stable GUI libs
- pjmlp 4y ago
  WebForms, WPF and EF 6 have been ported to .NET Core. WCF althought not initially supported, the industry has made enough pressure, that most of it is now available on WCF Core. SOAP libraries still exist. Thanks to the magic of WebAssembly, you can port that 2002 Silverlight application to OpenSilver, and use it on any modern browser.

miyuru 4y ago

I was given a old unmaintained react project to build a pipeline and the only way to run it was on node 12. It would not even build on latest node versions.

arcturus17 4y ago
Would this be out of the realm of possibility if you inherited, say, an old Django or .Net project?
SwiftyBug 4y ago
That's absolutely expected. Good news is that it's trivial to install whichever Node version you like.