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no one ever got fired for choosing react though. that chart library? already exists. mobile? react native. some weird combo box autocomplete ui component? someo

no one ever got fired for choosing react though. that chart library? already exists. mobile? react native. some weird combo box autocomplete ui component? someone already wrote that, just reuse it. dev tooling with debugging and profiling and all the memes. new hires know where to start. ecosystem is king

izelnakri 3y ago
People & thinking like this makes frontend development more complicated than it already is. I refuse to work with people who has this thought, had to make my HN comment ;) I think automated acceptance testing in browser is king rather than unit tests on the frontend.
- sergioisidoro 3y ago
  > I refuse to work with people who has this thought So you refuse to work with people who do not want to re-invent the wheel for a shiny new framework because it is "better"?
  - em-bee 3y ago
    the problem is that every framework comes with only three of the wheels you need, but in each framework the missing wheel is different, so you will always end up "reinventing" a wheel that another framework already has, because if you switch to that other framework, you'll have to reinvent a different wheel instead. if you don't want to reinvent a feature that another framework has a solution for, then i'll ask you to show that this other framework solves more problems than the current one, and it's worth the cost of switching (or switching back). but, like you, i don't like to switch to a new framework just because it promises to be better. i prefer to avoid switching frameworks as long as i can. i'll only switch in a project when i run into a problem that the current framework can't solve at all.
solatic 3y ago
This. People who disagree - why not write in Haskell?
- amelius 3y ago
  One of these days an LLM will translate ecosystems to less popular platforms. Or at least it will write the glue logic.
  - wokwokwok 3y ago
    Isn’t the irony of this that LLMs will only have enough training data to generate meaningful code for popular frameworks? Less popular platforms will get more isolated rather than less as the wave of generated code that “works out the box” only works with stuff like react…
- jppittma 3y ago
  If I thought I could deliver a better product and faster with Haskell, I'd use it.
- wruza 3y ago
  People suggest adding other languages to browsers all the time. Why not - because then you get bombarded with thousands of “why you need that”.
- the_gipsy 3y ago
  We write in Elm. To elaborate further: I don't believe ecosystem is king. Success can mean different things to different people, and is not always a single dimension of "popularity units".
  - minthara 3y ago
    We have one Elm project at work, and frankly it is a nightmare because no one wants to take those tickets and everyone avoids it like it is radioactive. Personally I have had to do quite a few of them and every time I find it worse compared to React, people just seem to hate it and it is very difficult to find people who want to work with it, so that project is now being rewritten in, guess what, react.
nailer 3y ago
They would have. In 2014 when React was new, the obvious safe choices were Underscore or Angular. Maybe Ember if you were clever. React would have been new and required a lot of justification. Likewise Svelte is mature and well understood enough that like React, enough nobody could get fired for choosing it either.
tobr 3y ago
> ecosystem If only the article had dedicated a section to how React trained us that things need to be built specifically for a certain framework, and how no other modern frontend framework is as stubbornly incompatible with the platform as React is.
- threatofrain 3y ago
  You can use a “meta” framework like Astro if you want, but micro front ends sound like hell. Nobody has really achieved portable non trivial components in a way that doesn’t come with a steep price tag, and web components have never taken off.
- reissbaker 3y ago
  IDK, I think Vue is pretty incompatible with the rest of the JS/TS platform — e.g. its templating language is pretty custom, and components built for it won't work in say, Svelte. Same for most frameworks; Solid isn't more compatible, it's just different (arguably better? With the drawback of a smaller ecosystem, because it's younger, and because no one ever got fired for choosing React). Svelte has its own unique lifecycle system; etc etc. This isn't really any different from frameworks in general: JQuery had its own massive ecosystem that assumed JQuery was being used; trying to use something from the Rails ecosystem in Padrino was unlikely to work well; Vim vs Emacs; etc etc. Frameworks accumulate ecosystems around them and have since pretty much the beginning of programming — I don't think React has nefariously trained ecosystems into the community; I think people tend to build libraries on top of other libraries they know, and React is popular, so it's the basis for more libraries (the ecosystem).
irrational 3y ago
Well, I work for a Fortune 100 company and our standard is Vue, so, yes, using React could potentially get me fired ;-)
- splendor_spoon 3y ago
  You have posted this reply in multiple threads on this post. Is it really that clever?
hk1337 3y ago
> no one ever got fired for choosing react though. Probably because they had already moved on to do the same thing at some other company for more money.

izelnakri 3y ago

People & thinking like this makes frontend development more complicated than it already is. I refuse to work with people who has this thought, had to make my HN comment ;) I think automated acceptance testing in browser is king rather than unit tests on the frontend.

sergioisidoro 3y ago
> I refuse to work with people who has this thought So you refuse to work with people who do not want to re-invent the wheel for a shiny new framework because it is "better"?
- em-bee 3y ago
  the problem is that every framework comes with only three of the wheels you need, but in each framework the missing wheel is different, so you will always end up "reinventing" a wheel that another framework already has, because if you switch to that other framework, you'll have to reinvent a different wheel instead. if you don't want to reinvent a feature that another framework has a solution for, then i'll ask you to show that this other framework solves more problems than the current one, and it's worth the cost of switching (or switching back). but, like you, i don't like to switch to a new framework just because it promises to be better. i prefer to avoid switching frameworks as long as i can. i'll only switch in a project when i run into a problem that the current framework can't solve at all.

solatic 3y ago

This. People who disagree - why not write in Haskell?

amelius 3y ago
One of these days an LLM will translate ecosystems to less popular platforms. Or at least it will write the glue logic.
- wokwokwok 3y ago
  Isn’t the irony of this that LLMs will only have enough training data to generate meaningful code for popular frameworks? Less popular platforms will get more isolated rather than less as the wave of generated code that “works out the box” only works with stuff like react…
jppittma 3y ago
If I thought I could deliver a better product and faster with Haskell, I'd use it.
wruza 3y ago
People suggest adding other languages to browsers all the time. Why not - because then you get bombarded with thousands of “why you need that”.
the_gipsy 3y ago
We write in Elm. To elaborate further: I don't believe ecosystem is king. Success can mean different things to different people, and is not always a single dimension of "popularity units".
- minthara 3y ago
  We have one Elm project at work, and frankly it is a nightmare because no one wants to take those tickets and everyone avoids it like it is radioactive. Personally I have had to do quite a few of them and every time I find it worse compared to React, people just seem to hate it and it is very difficult to find people who want to work with it, so that project is now being rewritten in, guess what, react.

nailer 3y ago

They would have. In 2014 when React was new, the obvious safe choices were Underscore or Angular. Maybe Ember if you were clever. React would have been new and required a lot of justification. Likewise Svelte is mature and well understood enough that like React, enough nobody could get fired for choosing it either.

tobr 3y ago

> ecosystem If only the article had dedicated a section to how React trained us that things need to be built specifically for a certain framework, and how no other modern frontend framework is as stubbornly incompatible with the platform as React is.

threatofrain 3y ago
You can use a “meta” framework like Astro if you want, but micro front ends sound like hell. Nobody has really achieved portable non trivial components in a way that doesn’t come with a steep price tag, and web components have never taken off.
reissbaker 3y ago
IDK, I think Vue is pretty incompatible with the rest of the JS/TS platform — e.g. its templating language is pretty custom, and components built for it won't work in say, Svelte. Same for most frameworks; Solid isn't more compatible, it's just different (arguably better? With the drawback of a smaller ecosystem, because it's younger, and because no one ever got fired for choosing React). Svelte has its own unique lifecycle system; etc etc. This isn't really any different from frameworks in general: JQuery had its own massive ecosystem that assumed JQuery was being used; trying to use something from the Rails ecosystem in Padrino was unlikely to work well; Vim vs Emacs; etc etc. Frameworks accumulate ecosystems around them and have since pretty much the beginning of programming — I don't think React has nefariously trained ecosystems into the community; I think people tend to build libraries on top of other libraries they know, and React is popular, so it's the basis for more libraries (the ecosystem).

irrational 3y ago

Well, I work for a Fortune 100 company and our standard is Vue, so, yes, using React could potentially get me fired ;-)

splendor_spoon 3y ago
You have posted this reply in multiple threads on this post. Is it really that clever?

hk1337 3y ago

> no one ever got fired for choosing react though. Probably because they had already moved on to do the same thing at some other company for more money.