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The article starts by a quote of Alex Russel, paid by Google to specify Web Components between 2008 and 2021 - a technology in direct competition with React at

The article starts by a quote of Alex Russel, paid by Google to specify Web Components between 2008 and 2021 - a technology in direct competition with React at the time. He is not a technologist to track or quote to get unbiased framework opinions. I don't agree with most of the argument here, to the point where I think we live in totally foreign echo chambers that rarely exchange ideas. I didn't get any new idea out of this article, it didn't inspire me to do something I already tried 10 times in the past. The website loads fast, and that's great. 10% of the CSS is unused. and that's a small blog. In the non-themed CSS, it's close to 50% unused. You could consider it a non problem - at scale dead CSS is complicated to manage, at least for me.

hasanhaja 3y ago
I don't feel it's fair to brand "web components" as a technology that was in direct competition with React. I think the nuance matters. They may have been solving similar problems then, and they may be optimized for different things now. But Web components are a web standard, and React is not. Pushing for web standard technologies is inherently unbiased because that's just betting on the platform. This results in pushing for platform improvements (like declarative shadow dom so it plays well with SSR, etc), and then everyone benefits. IMO it'd only be a bias take if web components were branded as having no issues whatsoever, or that they are the most optimal solution for everything. I think it's okay to say, "web components currently don't solve my problems and that's why I'm looking to use something else like React or Solid". However, I've not seen this sentiment shared when it's the other way around with React. It's always "no one got fired for picking React" instead of actually evaluating what will deliver the most value to your users.
- pcthrowaway 3y ago
  > Pushing for web standard technologies is inherently unbiased because that's just betting on the platform. There's a ton of politics around web standards, and you can bet if Google manages to push through Web Environment Integrity, I will not consider people suggesting to use it "unbiased because it's a standard"
  - hasanhaja 3y ago
    That's a fair point. I didn't consider that
- dahwolf 3y ago
  I'd take that point further and state that React is in no competition with anything. React was invented because Facebook had very interactive/stateful UI as well as large teams of developers working on the same codebase. The then conventional jQuery soup approach didn't cut it. Should the web platform come up with a standards-based approach to solve the same problem, then this is not "competition", it is a blessing. It's not like React earns Facebook any revenue. Ideally, it wouldn't be needed or exist at all.
- batmansmk 3y ago
  React has more implementation of its components model (preact, react, solidjs, inferno,…) than web components (chrome, ff partially and safari partially), is more used and is more indépendant from the current web monopoly. Anything w3c is now a standard to keep dominance.
- troupo 3y ago
  > I don't feel it's fair to brand "web components" as a technology that was in direct competition with React. I think the nuance matters. Nuance doesn't matter to most proponents of web components. When they were introduced, for the first few years they were explicitly marketed as platform-native solution that makes frameworks obsolete. Now the rhetoric seems more nuanced, but it's the same. It's only been upgraded to "build with lit". > IMO it'd only be a bias take if web components were branded as having no issues whatsoever, or that they are the most optimal solution for everything Mostly they are billed like that. And any voices criticizing them are either ignored or blocked.
afavour 3y ago
> paid by Google to specify Web Components between 2008 and 2021 - a technology in direct competition with React at the time I’m personally of the belief that we should assess arguments, not employer. Someone working on a competitor to React can make very valid arguments against it, they’re often some of the most knowledgeable people about the drawbacks of the framework. I’m personally not a fan of Alex’s abrasive style but I’ve seen plenty of his critiques of sites written in React-based stacks and they’re usually evidenced with bundle analysis, burn down charts and so on. They’re not unfounded. (I also disagree that Web Components are a competitor to React. Frameworks like Preact and Svelte are interoperable with Web Components and build on top of the API. React chooses not to but that’s neither here nor there)
- flakiness 3y ago
  > (I also disagree that Web Components are a competitor to React. Frameworks like Preact and Svelte are interoperable with Web Components and build on top of the API. React chooses not to but that’s neither here nor there) Used to work on Web Components (the browser side.) Although we didn't take it as a competitor, in hindsight it was - at least in a sense. Both are component-based technologies, and the expressiveness of React and ES6+ made WC less relevant. I think WC is still nice to have, but it is no longer a must-have as it was originally envisioned. The JS ecosystem has largely solved the problem by themselves without browser vendor's help (besides improvements of JS itself.)
- jitl 3y ago
  Neither Preact or Svelte produce web components by default or use features like Shadow DOM.
  - afavour 3y ago
    I’m not sure how that’s relevant to the point that Web Components is an API that can coexist with frontend frameworks.

hasanhaja 3y ago

I don't feel it's fair to brand "web components" as a technology that was in direct competition with React. I think the nuance matters. They may have been solving similar problems then, and they may be optimized for different things now. But Web components are a web standard, and React is not. Pushing for web standard technologies is inherently unbiased because that's just betting on the platform. This results in pushing for platform improvements (like declarative shadow dom so it plays well with SSR, etc), and then everyone benefits. IMO it'd only be a bias take if web components were branded as having no issues whatsoever, or that they are the most optimal solution for everything. I think it's okay to say, "web components currently don't solve my problems and that's why I'm looking to use something else like React or Solid". However, I've not seen this sentiment shared when it's the other way around with React. It's always "no one got fired for picking React" instead of actually evaluating what will deliver the most value to your users.

pcthrowaway 3y ago
> Pushing for web standard technologies is inherently unbiased because that's just betting on the platform. There's a ton of politics around web standards, and you can bet if Google manages to push through Web Environment Integrity, I will not consider people suggesting to use it "unbiased because it's a standard"
- hasanhaja 3y ago
  That's a fair point. I didn't consider that
dahwolf 3y ago
I'd take that point further and state that React is in no competition with anything. React was invented because Facebook had very interactive/stateful UI as well as large teams of developers working on the same codebase. The then conventional jQuery soup approach didn't cut it. Should the web platform come up with a standards-based approach to solve the same problem, then this is not "competition", it is a blessing. It's not like React earns Facebook any revenue. Ideally, it wouldn't be needed or exist at all.
batmansmk 3y ago
React has more implementation of its components model (preact, react, solidjs, inferno,…) than web components (chrome, ff partially and safari partially), is more used and is more indépendant from the current web monopoly. Anything w3c is now a standard to keep dominance.
troupo 3y ago
> I don't feel it's fair to brand "web components" as a technology that was in direct competition with React. I think the nuance matters. Nuance doesn't matter to most proponents of web components. When they were introduced, for the first few years they were explicitly marketed as platform-native solution that makes frameworks obsolete. Now the rhetoric seems more nuanced, but it's the same. It's only been upgraded to "build with lit". > IMO it'd only be a bias take if web components were branded as having no issues whatsoever, or that they are the most optimal solution for everything Mostly they are billed like that. And any voices criticizing them are either ignored or blocked.

afavour 3y ago

> paid by Google to specify Web Components between 2008 and 2021 - a technology in direct competition with React at the time I’m personally of the belief that we should assess arguments, not employer. Someone working on a competitor to React can make very valid arguments against it, they’re often some of the most knowledgeable people about the drawbacks of the framework. I’m personally not a fan of Alex’s abrasive style but I’ve seen plenty of his critiques of sites written in React-based stacks and they’re usually evidenced with bundle analysis, burn down charts and so on. They’re not unfounded. (I also disagree that Web Components are a competitor to React. Frameworks like Preact and Svelte are interoperable with Web Components and build on top of the API. React chooses not to but that’s neither here nor there)

flakiness 3y ago
> (I also disagree that Web Components are a competitor to React. Frameworks like Preact and Svelte are interoperable with Web Components and build on top of the API. React chooses not to but that’s neither here nor there) Used to work on Web Components (the browser side.) Although we didn't take it as a competitor, in hindsight it was - at least in a sense. Both are component-based technologies, and the expressiveness of React and ES6+ made WC less relevant. I think WC is still nice to have, but it is no longer a must-have as it was originally envisioned. The JS ecosystem has largely solved the problem by themselves without browser vendor's help (besides improvements of JS itself.)
jitl 3y ago
Neither Preact or Svelte produce web components by default or use features like Shadow DOM.
- afavour 3y ago
  I’m not sure how that’s relevant to the point that Web Components is an API that can coexist with frontend frameworks.