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I don’t think I’ve ever seen a web app where the performance of React was such a bottleneck that it would in any way justify migrating to another tech stack. Yo

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a web app where the performance of React was such a bottleneck that it would in any way justify migrating to another tech stack. You’d have to get so far into a project for that to become an issue that the cost of switching would be huge.

rcme 4y ago
Have you tried the new Reddit website?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- yladiz 4y ago
  Do you think it’s solely because of React?
  - rcme 4y ago
    If you read my original post, one of my points was that React’s rendering and data model makes it too easy to render unnecessarily, which causes perf issues.
    - yladiz 4y ago
      I would say “can cause” performance issues, but I wouldn’t say React is one of the primary reasons for poor performance. You can get very far with little optimization in React, so I am skeptical that the way React works fundamentally causes issues.
      - ricardobeat 4y ago
        YMMV. I've been involved in multiple large-scale React projects at this point, and they all eventually suffered from performance issues, related to React's rendering model. And fixing it is always painful. On Reddit, as another comment mentioned, yes, React seems to have been a major factor in how slow it became due to the patterns it encourages, and the massive JS sources. You can only 'get very far' because browsers are crazy fast and you don't notice what's going on underneath. Until it catches up to you.
        bayesian_horse 4y ago
        Then you would need to show me proof that other frameworks handle similar complexity with less performance degradation or optimize with less pain. My general advice in such cases would be to strive for more isolation. Do use Redux. Don't be afraid to use multiple stores on one page if that allows you to isolate rerenders.
        rcme 4y ago
        I have experiencing on both complex React projects and complex vanilla JS projects (think the scale and complexity of Figma). Vanilla JS lends itself to being more performant. Anything that happens in Vanilla JS happens for an explicit, developer-defined reason. Things don’t rerender unless explicitly asked to. This can be both good and bad. While Vanilla JS tends to stay way more performant as complexity scales, “stale state” bugs are much more common. It’s a tradeoff.
        bayesian_horse 4y ago
        I had the exact opposite experience. I mean, first of all, people using "VanillaJS" get the DOM manipulation wrong a lot more often. And then I do hope you don't conflate code size with complexity, because of course, direct DOM manipulation takes one heck of a lot more code (unless you create and maintain your own bespoke framework creating your own headaches). You are basically contradicting the whole reason Facebook, a pretty big and quite smart company, started React in the first place. You also don't seem to understand what "rerendering" means. And that is often a problem in terms of performance. A React component only executes to determine if things have to be changed in the DOM. Not understanding this is creates a lot of pain.
        satvikpendem 4y ago
        As well, people don't understand that React is an idempotent rendering framework. It's easy to reason about because of the same reason why functional languages are easy to reason about, it does not mutate but instead creates new copies.
  - pxtail 4y ago
    > Do you think it’s solely because of React? Yes, if the company like reddit, facebook - which has prestige, finances and ability to hire rockstar-10x-A-players React/JS developers is unable to get their shit right and their react fronts works like garbage then it simply means that there is no hope, for some reason it's simply not possible to make performant app with React.
    - satvikpendem 4y ago
      Or it's purposefully bad to incentivize people to use their app which has more tracking. I've had React frontends that were performant and plain JS frontends that were laggy. It's not really a factor of the framework.
    - belmont_sup 4y ago
      The other way around is to point at great React based apps. Linear’s project management tool is so quick and fast. It takes a whole mindset embedded into a team to make a product fast from the get-go.
anonymoushn 4y ago
As soon as a web site adds the feature where content is removed when out of the viewport and the browser's find feature no longer works, that web site has reached this point and is deploying workarounds that harm the user experience. Facebook and Twitter have had this feature for most of a decade.
- internetter 4y ago
  Oh lord I thought it was just me. Browsers are really good at displaying long lists, just maybe not loading them all at once ;)

rcme 4y ago

Have you tried the new Reddit website?

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
yladiz 4y ago
Do you think it’s solely because of React?
- rcme 4y ago
  If you read my original post, one of my points was that React’s rendering and data model makes it too easy to render unnecessarily, which causes perf issues.
  - yladiz 4y ago
    I would say “can cause” performance issues, but I wouldn’t say React is one of the primary reasons for poor performance. You can get very far with little optimization in React, so I am skeptical that the way React works fundamentally causes issues.
    - ricardobeat 4y ago
      YMMV. I've been involved in multiple large-scale React projects at this point, and they all eventually suffered from performance issues, related to React's rendering model. And fixing it is always painful. On Reddit, as another comment mentioned, yes, React seems to have been a major factor in how slow it became due to the patterns it encourages, and the massive JS sources. You can only 'get very far' because browsers are crazy fast and you don't notice what's going on underneath. Until it catches up to you.
      - bayesian_horse 4y ago
        Then you would need to show me proof that other frameworks handle similar complexity with less performance degradation or optimize with less pain. My general advice in such cases would be to strive for more isolation. Do use Redux. Don't be afraid to use multiple stores on one page if that allows you to isolate rerenders.
        rcme 4y ago
        I have experiencing on both complex React projects and complex vanilla JS projects (think the scale and complexity of Figma). Vanilla JS lends itself to being more performant. Anything that happens in Vanilla JS happens for an explicit, developer-defined reason. Things don’t rerender unless explicitly asked to. This can be both good and bad. While Vanilla JS tends to stay way more performant as complexity scales, “stale state” bugs are much more common. It’s a tradeoff.
        bayesian_horse 4y ago
        I had the exact opposite experience. I mean, first of all, people using "VanillaJS" get the DOM manipulation wrong a lot more often. And then I do hope you don't conflate code size with complexity, because of course, direct DOM manipulation takes one heck of a lot more code (unless you create and maintain your own bespoke framework creating your own headaches). You are basically contradicting the whole reason Facebook, a pretty big and quite smart company, started React in the first place. You also don't seem to understand what "rerendering" means. And that is often a problem in terms of performance. A React component only executes to determine if things have to be changed in the DOM. Not understanding this is creates a lot of pain.
        satvikpendem 4y ago
        As well, people don't understand that React is an idempotent rendering framework. It's easy to reason about because of the same reason why functional languages are easy to reason about, it does not mutate but instead creates new copies.
- pxtail 4y ago
  > Do you think it’s solely because of React? Yes, if the company like reddit, facebook - which has prestige, finances and ability to hire rockstar-10x-A-players React/JS developers is unable to get their shit right and their react fronts works like garbage then it simply means that there is no hope, for some reason it's simply not possible to make performant app with React.
  - satvikpendem 4y ago
    Or it's purposefully bad to incentivize people to use their app which has more tracking. I've had React frontends that were performant and plain JS frontends that were laggy. It's not really a factor of the framework.
  - belmont_sup 4y ago
    The other way around is to point at great React based apps. Linear’s project management tool is so quick and fast. It takes a whole mindset embedded into a team to make a product fast from the get-go.

anonymoushn 4y ago

As soon as a web site adds the feature where content is removed when out of the viewport and the browser's find feature no longer works, that web site has reached this point and is deploying workarounds that harm the user experience. Facebook and Twitter have had this feature for most of a decade.

internetter 4y ago
Oh lord I thought it was just me. Browsers are really good at displaying long lists, just maybe not loading them all at once ;)