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I'm sure the React Router/Remix guys are smart, but I don't get the impression that they actually build and maintain real world websites, and the closest they g

I'm sure the React Router/Remix guys are smart, but I don't get the impression that they actually build and maintain real world websites, and the closest they get is a month or two of consulting. They've always been extremely hostile to anything resembling stability, and extremely unreceptive of anyone calling out how unproductive this is.

kevlened 2y ago
> extremely hostile to anything resembling stability Remix has one of the best stars/issue ratios I've ever seen in a large project. They have 27k stars for 228 issues (118 stars/issue). Meanwhile next.js has 121k stars for 2678 issues (45 stars/issue). Remix also has a robust future flag system to ensure nothing breaks during transitions. https://github.com/remix-run/remix/issues/4598 https://github.com/remix-run/remix/issues/4598 For larger changes (like the controversial flat routes), they even maintain the old feature so you don't have to upgrade. https://www.npmjs.com/package/@remix-run/v1-route-convention https://www.npmjs.com/package/@remix-run/v1-route-convention I don't think the evidence supports your assertion.
- sa46 2y ago
  I haven’t used Remix, but I regret choosing react-router due to frequent major version upgrades.
  - timw4mail 2y ago
    ...and completely changing how everything works on each major version change.
  - slimebot80 2y ago
    If you are happy with one version you can just stick to it? You don't have to update your phone and laptop every year, even if you are made to feel so.
    - doomroot 2y ago
      I wish this were true. In the modern JavaScript ecosystem you either pin everything or pin nothing.
    - crummy 2y ago
      In our case we wanted to upgrade another dependency (react-admin) which necessitated a react-router upgrade, which we used throughout the rest of our application, so it was a reasonable amount of work and sticking to the old one was not an option.
    - 0xblinq 2y ago
      You do have to upgrade. At some point incompatibilities between libraries arise, and if neglected for too long at some point it becomes impossible to update everything. Keeping dependencies up to date is an important part of software maintenance.
  - cageface 2y ago
    Those breaking changes were especially painful in React Native apps. Thankfully there are some good alternatives now.
    - phantomathkg 2y ago
      Would you mind sharing what are they?
      - cageface 2y ago
        You could take a look at these: https://tanstack.com/router/latest https://tanstack.com/router/latest https://github.com/molefrog/wouter/ https://github.com/molefrog/wouter/
        throwaway11460 2y ago
        Wouter is great, I recommend.
  - 0xblinq 2y ago
    Take one more sir.
- evantbyrne 2y ago
  I want to preface this by saying I don't have a dog in this fight. Not a big react fan in general although I write it for work, and have no opinions on specific routers or 3rd-party state libraries being better or worse than others. With that out of the way, where is the research showing that this is a good indicator of software reliability? Highly starred projects are left unfinished and abandoned all the time. The thread above goes into details about upgrade challenges. So it seems stars are maybe not such a good indicator of reliability. What about using a star to issue ratio? I've personally seen multiple projects with 10k+ stars that hide their bug reports in the discussions tab. Terraform has a much worse ratio, but would you describe it as much less reliable? Show me the research.
  - kevlened 2y ago
    I agree that stars alone don't equate to reliability, which is why I used (the very much imperfect, but better) stars/issue as part of the evidence. While I'm unaware of research supporting stars/issue, it's a useful rule-of-thumb at the extremes. With React (318), if something isn't working, your code is almost certainly wrong. With Bun (24), if something isn't working, it's likely Bun (sorry, Jarred). The assertion the Remix creators are "extremely hostile to anything resembling stability" should place Remix at the lowest extreme, but that isn't so. If you use a metric or rule-of-thumb for evaluating reliability, I'm curious to hear it.
    - evantbyrne 2y ago
      Gotcha so that is sort of a precursor to a deeper inquiry it sounds like. I'm concerned it sounds like there may be a strong bias in favor of popularity. Maybe that is less of an issue for developers already shopping within a specific stack/philosophy though. I tend to try and ignore stars, because I've been burned by popular and unpopular projects alike. They also seem to be gamed at times. For an initial evaluation of something I might actually use I look at who the owners are, when the project was last updated, and explore the issue tracker (including closed tickets). That is usually enough to identify projects with major problems. If they pass the initial audit, then the process continues.
- miunau 2y ago
  This is a weird metric.
- randomdev3 2y ago
  I don't think issues are a good measurement for popular repos. Majority of them are just basic skill issues and inability to read 2 pages of docs. Especially next community seems to be full of people who don't seem to know anything about web development complaining because they don't know how cookies work or something...
- zoontek 2y ago
  Stars don't mean usage. Remix has 21,375 downloads per week according to npm. Next has 6,562,587.
  - uasi 2y ago
    The remix package is no longer used[1]. Remix's central package is @remix-run/router[2], which has 5,627,846 downloads per week. [1] https://github.com/remix-run/remix/pull/9433 https://github.com/remix-run/remix/pull/9433 [2] https://www.npmjs.com/package/@remix-run/router https://www.npmjs.com/package/@remix-run/router
- deathtrader666 2y ago
  Hey I star projects just as a way of bookmarking them..
- cqqxo4zV46cp 2y ago
  Using “star / issue ratio” is a basis for your point is just an indicator that you’re too deep into the JS ecosystem. It reads into weird GitHub metrics to a unique degree.
johnmcarthur 2y ago
I can already imagine these comments will be screenshot and mocked at by the React Router/Remix author in Twitter :)
aprilthird2021 2y ago
Isn't Remix owned by Shopify? I'm fairly certain Remix is used on some of the Shopify platform / admin pages, that's a fairly large and well-used real world website being maintained in Remix
- tjosepo 2y ago
  Ryan did mention this in his talk at React Conf. Shopify has had issues adopting Remix because their existing front-end codebases are massive and they couldn't afford to rewrite them to use Remix. That's actually the whole motivation behind turning Remix into a bundler plugin. With a bundler plugin, you can incrementally migrate parts of your existing application to use the features of Remix without having to rewrite all of it.
ilrwbwrkhv 2y ago
They also have been weirdly money focused. Such as moving the react router package to an org called react training. The quintessential routing library of react being sold like that left a bad taste in my mouth. Combined with reacts incredibly poor api, it turned me off react forever. Svelte and vue are both much better.
cqqxo4zV46cp 2y ago
You’ve hit the nail on the head. The JS ecosystem has this problem generally, but Remix is particularly bad with it. It’s like people don’t spend the time experiencing the problems they’re seeking to fix before parachuting in and “fixing” them with their framework or library or whatever. You can’t expect people to build good, reliable software with your framework without knowing how to actually build good, reliable software yourself.

kevlened 2y ago

> extremely hostile to anything resembling stability Remix has one of the best stars/issue ratios I've ever seen in a large project. They have 27k stars for 228 issues (118 stars/issue). Meanwhile next.js has 121k stars for 2678 issues (45 stars/issue). Remix also has a robust future flag system to ensure nothing breaks during transitions. https://github.com/remix-run/remix/issues/4598 https://github.com/remix-run/remix/issues/4598 For larger changes (like the controversial flat routes), they even maintain the old feature so you don't have to upgrade. https://www.npmjs.com/package/@remix-run/v1-route-convention https://www.npmjs.com/package/@remix-run/v1-route-convention I don't think the evidence supports your assertion.

sa46 2y ago
I haven’t used Remix, but I regret choosing react-router due to frequent major version upgrades.
- timw4mail 2y ago
  ...and completely changing how everything works on each major version change.
- slimebot80 2y ago
  If you are happy with one version you can just stick to it? You don't have to update your phone and laptop every year, even if you are made to feel so.
  - doomroot 2y ago
    I wish this were true. In the modern JavaScript ecosystem you either pin everything or pin nothing.
  - crummy 2y ago
    In our case we wanted to upgrade another dependency (react-admin) which necessitated a react-router upgrade, which we used throughout the rest of our application, so it was a reasonable amount of work and sticking to the old one was not an option.
  - 0xblinq 2y ago
    You do have to upgrade. At some point incompatibilities between libraries arise, and if neglected for too long at some point it becomes impossible to update everything. Keeping dependencies up to date is an important part of software maintenance.
- cageface 2y ago
  Those breaking changes were especially painful in React Native apps. Thankfully there are some good alternatives now.
  - phantomathkg 2y ago
    Would you mind sharing what are they?
    - cageface 2y ago
      You could take a look at these: https://tanstack.com/router/latest https://tanstack.com/router/latest https://github.com/molefrog/wouter/ https://github.com/molefrog/wouter/
      - throwaway11460 2y ago
        Wouter is great, I recommend.
- 0xblinq 2y ago
  Take one more sir.
evantbyrne 2y ago
I want to preface this by saying I don't have a dog in this fight. Not a big react fan in general although I write it for work, and have no opinions on specific routers or 3rd-party state libraries being better or worse than others. With that out of the way, where is the research showing that this is a good indicator of software reliability? Highly starred projects are left unfinished and abandoned all the time. The thread above goes into details about upgrade challenges. So it seems stars are maybe not such a good indicator of reliability. What about using a star to issue ratio? I've personally seen multiple projects with 10k+ stars that hide their bug reports in the discussions tab. Terraform has a much worse ratio, but would you describe it as much less reliable? Show me the research.
- kevlened 2y ago
  I agree that stars alone don't equate to reliability, which is why I used (the very much imperfect, but better) stars/issue as part of the evidence. While I'm unaware of research supporting stars/issue, it's a useful rule-of-thumb at the extremes. With React (318), if something isn't working, your code is almost certainly wrong. With Bun (24), if something isn't working, it's likely Bun (sorry, Jarred). The assertion the Remix creators are "extremely hostile to anything resembling stability" should place Remix at the lowest extreme, but that isn't so. If you use a metric or rule-of-thumb for evaluating reliability, I'm curious to hear it.
  - evantbyrne 2y ago
    Gotcha so that is sort of a precursor to a deeper inquiry it sounds like. I'm concerned it sounds like there may be a strong bias in favor of popularity. Maybe that is less of an issue for developers already shopping within a specific stack/philosophy though. I tend to try and ignore stars, because I've been burned by popular and unpopular projects alike. They also seem to be gamed at times. For an initial evaluation of something I might actually use I look at who the owners are, when the project was last updated, and explore the issue tracker (including closed tickets). That is usually enough to identify projects with major problems. If they pass the initial audit, then the process continues.
miunau 2y ago
This is a weird metric.
randomdev3 2y ago
I don't think issues are a good measurement for popular repos. Majority of them are just basic skill issues and inability to read 2 pages of docs. Especially next community seems to be full of people who don't seem to know anything about web development complaining because they don't know how cookies work or something...
zoontek 2y ago
Stars don't mean usage. Remix has 21,375 downloads per week according to npm. Next has 6,562,587.
- uasi 2y ago
  The remix package is no longer used[1]. Remix's central package is @remix-run/router[2], which has 5,627,846 downloads per week. [1] https://github.com/remix-run/remix/pull/9433 https://github.com/remix-run/remix/pull/9433 [2] https://www.npmjs.com/package/@remix-run/router https://www.npmjs.com/package/@remix-run/router
deathtrader666 2y ago
Hey I star projects just as a way of bookmarking them..
cqqxo4zV46cp 2y ago
Using “star / issue ratio” is a basis for your point is just an indicator that you’re too deep into the JS ecosystem. It reads into weird GitHub metrics to a unique degree.

johnmcarthur 2y ago

I can already imagine these comments will be screenshot and mocked at by the React Router/Remix author in Twitter :)

aprilthird2021 2y ago

Isn't Remix owned by Shopify? I'm fairly certain Remix is used on some of the Shopify platform / admin pages, that's a fairly large and well-used real world website being maintained in Remix

tjosepo 2y ago
Ryan did mention this in his talk at React Conf. Shopify has had issues adopting Remix because their existing front-end codebases are massive and they couldn't afford to rewrite them to use Remix. That's actually the whole motivation behind turning Remix into a bundler plugin. With a bundler plugin, you can incrementally migrate parts of your existing application to use the features of Remix without having to rewrite all of it.

ilrwbwrkhv 2y ago

They also have been weirdly money focused. Such as moving the react router package to an org called react training. The quintessential routing library of react being sold like that left a bad taste in my mouth. Combined with reacts incredibly poor api, it turned me off react forever. Svelte and vue are both much better.

cqqxo4zV46cp 2y ago

You’ve hit the nail on the head. The JS ecosystem has this problem generally, but Remix is particularly bad with it. It’s like people don’t spend the time experiencing the problems they’re seeking to fix before parachuting in and “fixing” them with their framework or library or whatever. You can’t expect people to build good, reliable software with your framework without knowing how to actually build good, reliable software yourself.