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That’s something people have said for a while but I’m pretty sure React was the main thing people were moving towards 5 years ago and I think, for the most part

That’s something people have said for a while but I’m pretty sure React was the main thing people were moving towards 5 years ago and I think, for the most part, people are still using react. That doesn’t sound like constant churn or people switching frameworks all the time (caveat 1: react has changed from eg classes to functional components and hooks; caveat 2: maybe front end is broken into groups and one picked up react 5 years ago for two years, another picked it up four years ago switching away after two years, and so on, and I’m just combining them all as ‘used react for five years’ in my head). I feel like the churn has gone down over time. But maybe that is also a decrease in my personal interest in front end as well as posts here (I recall there used to be a lot more frontend related posts here ~10 years ago)

arcbyte 3y ago
5 years ago I was the lead architect on a v2 rewrite project of about 30% of our app. We considered React but the landscape was also full of Angular and Vue and a bunch of others I don't remember. At the end of the day, we went with the latest version of our boring server side rendering library that the rest of the app used. A huge reason was the churn in front-end javascript libraries. I've never once regretted that decision and the project was a big success.
- fsloth 3y ago
  "we went with the latest version of our boring server side rendering library that the rest of the app used." Boring tools are the best thing ever. What did you use?
  - arcbyte 3y ago
    We went from JSF1 something to JSF2 something. Very boring but there was so much technology change already in this rewrite that we chose to limit the amount of new stuff for everyone to learn especially when we didnt know if it would be applicable to anything in their future career.
    - fsloth 3y ago
      ”especially when we didnt know if it would be applicable to anything in their future career.” Wow, you made architectural decisions based partly on optimizing the employees career development? Kudos! I’m not sure how common actually investing intentionally in engineers careers is?
- nonethewiser 3y ago
  Seems to confirm his point, and matches my experience as well. Front end has largely standardized on React. Vue is a distant 2nd and Angular is really not even considered for new projects.
- hinkley 3y ago
  About six years ago I went backend to avoid the React churn, hoping it would eat itself by now. Unfortunately that didn’t pan out. Apparently it’s the new Struts.

arcbyte 3y ago

5 years ago I was the lead architect on a v2 rewrite project of about 30% of our app. We considered React but the landscape was also full of Angular and Vue and a bunch of others I don't remember. At the end of the day, we went with the latest version of our boring server side rendering library that the rest of the app used. A huge reason was the churn in front-end javascript libraries. I've never once regretted that decision and the project was a big success.

fsloth 3y ago
"we went with the latest version of our boring server side rendering library that the rest of the app used." Boring tools are the best thing ever. What did you use?
- arcbyte 3y ago
  We went from JSF1 something to JSF2 something. Very boring but there was so much technology change already in this rewrite that we chose to limit the amount of new stuff for everyone to learn especially when we didnt know if it would be applicable to anything in their future career.
  - fsloth 3y ago
    ”especially when we didnt know if it would be applicable to anything in their future career.” Wow, you made architectural decisions based partly on optimizing the employees career development? Kudos! I’m not sure how common actually investing intentionally in engineers careers is?
nonethewiser 3y ago
Seems to confirm his point, and matches my experience as well. Front end has largely standardized on React. Vue is a distant 2nd and Angular is really not even considered for new projects.
hinkley 3y ago
About six years ago I went backend to avoid the React churn, hoping it would eat itself by now. Unfortunately that didn’t pan out. Apparently it’s the new Struts.