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The thing I find most frustrating about “The Boring Revolution” is that it feels stuck in the particular year of 2015. Like, React has been out for 12 years. Re

The thing I find most frustrating about “The Boring Revolution” is that it feels stuck in the particular year of 2015. Like, React has been out for 12 years. React is older now than Ruby on Rails was when the Boring essay came out. And yet I still hear people talk about React as this “shiny trendy thing”, even though it’s a mature technology with huge adoption, mountains of examples and documentation, and millions of developers with years of experience building in it. If the essay had come out in 2008, Ruby on Rails would’ve been the “exciting” thing it was calling out. But instead, Ruby on Rails is generally considered in the “boring” camp, while things that came out closer to the essay’s publication like React are in a state of “Permanent Shiny”. All of which blinds people to the fact that the web space has in fact settled down years ago and is not in the state of immense flux that actually was happening in 2015.

acaloiar 2y ago
To reduce "the boring revolution" to a React aversion is a bit dismissive. "Boring" is malleable. If your team is full of React experts, React is boring. If your team is full of backend-oriented engineers who rarely deal with the frontend, React is much less boring. "Boring" is also not binary; it is continuous. The mix of technologies in your stack culminate in some arbitrary measure of boringness. This measure can also be thought of as the degree to which teams choose cutting/bleeding edge technologies. If the mix is mostly cutting/bleeding edge, it's very likely that production support is not boring, and problems operating the stack in production are not boring. Choosing boring technology is also not a panacea that solves every team's problems. Although doing so likely mitigates them.
johnsutor 2y ago
There are plenty of "newer" technologies that closely mimic more "boring" tech too. For example, Svelte feels a lot like writing vanilla HTML and JS, Supabase is all built entirely on PostGRES instead of a shiny, noSQL database.
Spivak 2y ago
I'm not really sure how you expected the mantra of use mature technologies that are stable, mostly unchanging, and have staying power could have turned out any other way. React Hooks which required a partial rewrite for every code base happened in React 16-17 which was in 2020. This is neither a boring or stable technology to build a business on. This doesn't mean it's bad but it doesn't survive the "I can pick the code up after a few years and get it up to date with minimal effort" test. Write boring code is about going down paths that are well troddened enough that they paved a sidewalk which isn't going anywhere any time soon. Most of the frontend world can't even conceive of an LTS release right now. I genuinely don't understand the author, choosing boring technology is about making choices so that that platform on which you stand is rock-solid. It's easier to exercise fun, creativity, and new ideas on such a platform because there aren't any sharp edges and you can start pushing a technology. The examples with introducing Kotlin or Python/PL seemingly aren't motivated by anything other than "they're new." What problem are they solving and do you have that problem?
- JohnBooty 2y ago
  It's easier to exercise fun, creativity, and new ideas on such a platform because there aren't any sharp edges and you can start pushing a technology. Yeah. I don't interpret "use boring tech" as "literally don't use anything newer than 10 years old" or whatever. You absolutely can/should/must use more exciting things if they are relevant to whatever unique problem you're trying to solve. But everything else possible in your stack (particularly foundational elements) should be as boring as possible - i.e. unless you are specifically innovating in the area of RDBMS systems, you should be choosing a "boring" existing RDBMS.
- root_axis 2y ago
  > React Hooks which required a partial rewrite for every code base happened in React 16-17 which was in 2020 Except it was not required. Class components still work exactly as they did back then.
  - imbnwa 2y ago
    A problem might be major libraries moving on to Hooks-based interfaces
    - root_axis 2y ago
      The same reasoning applies. Don't upgrade if you don't need the new features.
      - Spivak 2y ago
        If your answer to how to make it stable is never update (including your dependencies) then you're not working on a stable technology. Stable is being able to set up unattended upgrades on Ubuntu LTS fearlessly. When was the last time you worried about your kernel update?
        root_axis 2y ago
        > If your answer to how to make it stable is never update then you're not working on a stable technology. I didn't say "never update", I said that if you don't need the new features then don't upgrade. If you do need the new features then I don't understand what the problem is. > Stable is being able to set up unattended upgrades on Ubuntu fearlessly. lol what? I've never had a system survive an Ubuntu upgrade without breaking something.
givemeethekeys 2y ago
React to me will always feel like Java - a big solution by a big company for solving big company problems. When it is forced on small problems in small companies it creates unhappiness, yet, choosing something else feels like the "no one ever got fired for choosing IBM / Microsoft" dilemma.
- root_axis 2y ago
  React isn't big, it's about as small as a "framework" gets. The problem most people face is actually that the simplicity gives the developer unlimited freedom to craft whatever complex monstrosity they desire.
  - netdevnet 2y ago
    You haven't used vue 2 or svelte then. Modern React is big and opinionated (just like Angular). When people talk about react they are not just talking about a state management library anymore
    - root_axis 2y ago
      Vue and Svelte are just as complex as React, I'd argue Vue often ends up being even more complex than react even though the barrier to entry is a bit lower for novices. If you disagree, I encourage you to link to a mature project on github built with svelte or vue that you regard as an example of simplicity.
  - hggigg 2y ago
    The problem is by the time it does everything you need it to do, it's a fat turd again. Your point is like saying C is a lightweight language. It sure is, until you have layered everything else you need on top of it.
    - cogman10 2y ago
      But it is though. Saying react is complex is much like saying C is complex because of OpenGL or SDL. React isn't the ecosystem anymore than C is.
hggigg 2y ago
React is not boring. We have to use a 64 gig machine to build one of our React things and it takes 45 minutes to do so. I'm literally on a meeting now trying to work out how to make it boring again.
- Uehreka 2y ago
  That sounds like an architecture issue. In 10 years I’ve used React for a wide variety of projects from digital publishing tools to realtime medical dashboards to WebRTC-based videoconferencing apps with 3D graphics. I’ve never seen a build require anything like that much horsepower or time.
  - hggigg 2y ago
    Ah yes but you likely aren’t at the mercy of the lowest bidders!
- defofboring 2y ago
  That’s the definition of boring in tech. Before modern web dev practices my team was notified a dev had started the wipe/reinstall OS process on a 1,000 bare metal lab desktops and servers due to a bug in their deployment script From prior experience I knew only the OS partition had been nuked so far not old data. So my team collected the disks, closed a campus computer, connected disks via USB adapters, shorted the two pins on ATX power supplies to provide power to the disks and booted from the lab machines it was all connected to into a live USB Linux system where we ran recovery tools on ~600-700 SATA disks (some servers had been snapshotted to backup and didn’t need the effort) That was the most interesting day in tech I’ve ever worked and I started my career designing add on boards for a company that sold to Nortel before they imploded; my output literally shipped late 90s-early 00s internet users packets around Noodling if else and for loops day in and day around some biz context I don’t care about but some Harvard grad has seed money to advertise is the lamest; the 2010s, an entire decade if my career and since, has been really boring.
emmanueloga_ 2y ago
I've been using preact and I think it fills the bill of "boring" (the "good" boring) a lot better [1]. -- 1: https://preactjs.com/blog/preact-x https://preactjs.com/blog/preact-x
shepherdjerred 2y ago
100% The biggest change in the last few years has been a shift from Webpack to Vite, which, IMO, is a breath of fresh air.

acaloiar 2y ago

To reduce "the boring revolution" to a React aversion is a bit dismissive. "Boring" is malleable. If your team is full of React experts, React is boring. If your team is full of backend-oriented engineers who rarely deal with the frontend, React is much less boring. "Boring" is also not binary; it is continuous. The mix of technologies in your stack culminate in some arbitrary measure of boringness. This measure can also be thought of as the degree to which teams choose cutting/bleeding edge technologies. If the mix is mostly cutting/bleeding edge, it's very likely that production support is not boring, and problems operating the stack in production are not boring. Choosing boring technology is also not a panacea that solves every team's problems. Although doing so likely mitigates them.

johnsutor 2y ago

There are plenty of "newer" technologies that closely mimic more "boring" tech too. For example, Svelte feels a lot like writing vanilla HTML and JS, Supabase is all built entirely on PostGRES instead of a shiny, noSQL database.

Spivak 2y ago

I'm not really sure how you expected the mantra of use mature technologies that are stable, mostly unchanging, and have staying power could have turned out any other way. React Hooks which required a partial rewrite for every code base happened in React 16-17 which was in 2020. This is neither a boring or stable technology to build a business on. This doesn't mean it's bad but it doesn't survive the "I can pick the code up after a few years and get it up to date with minimal effort" test. Write boring code is about going down paths that are well troddened enough that they paved a sidewalk which isn't going anywhere any time soon. Most of the frontend world can't even conceive of an LTS release right now. I genuinely don't understand the author, choosing boring technology is about making choices so that that platform on which you stand is rock-solid. It's easier to exercise fun, creativity, and new ideas on such a platform because there aren't any sharp edges and you can start pushing a technology. The examples with introducing Kotlin or Python/PL seemingly aren't motivated by anything other than "they're new." What problem are they solving and do you have that problem?

JohnBooty 2y ago
It's easier to exercise fun, creativity, and new ideas on such a platform because there aren't any sharp edges and you can start pushing a technology. Yeah. I don't interpret "use boring tech" as "literally don't use anything newer than 10 years old" or whatever. You absolutely can/should/must use more exciting things if they are relevant to whatever unique problem you're trying to solve. But everything else possible in your stack (particularly foundational elements) should be as boring as possible - i.e. unless you are specifically innovating in the area of RDBMS systems, you should be choosing a "boring" existing RDBMS.
root_axis 2y ago
> React Hooks which required a partial rewrite for every code base happened in React 16-17 which was in 2020 Except it was not required. Class components still work exactly as they did back then.
- imbnwa 2y ago
  A problem might be major libraries moving on to Hooks-based interfaces
  - root_axis 2y ago
    The same reasoning applies. Don't upgrade if you don't need the new features.
    - Spivak 2y ago
      If your answer to how to make it stable is never update (including your dependencies) then you're not working on a stable technology. Stable is being able to set up unattended upgrades on Ubuntu LTS fearlessly. When was the last time you worried about your kernel update?
      - root_axis 2y ago
        > If your answer to how to make it stable is never update then you're not working on a stable technology. I didn't say "never update", I said that if you don't need the new features then don't upgrade. If you do need the new features then I don't understand what the problem is. > Stable is being able to set up unattended upgrades on Ubuntu fearlessly. lol what? I've never had a system survive an Ubuntu upgrade without breaking something.

givemeethekeys 2y ago

React to me will always feel like Java - a big solution by a big company for solving big company problems. When it is forced on small problems in small companies it creates unhappiness, yet, choosing something else feels like the "no one ever got fired for choosing IBM / Microsoft" dilemma.

root_axis 2y ago
React isn't big, it's about as small as a "framework" gets. The problem most people face is actually that the simplicity gives the developer unlimited freedom to craft whatever complex monstrosity they desire.
- netdevnet 2y ago
  You haven't used vue 2 or svelte then. Modern React is big and opinionated (just like Angular). When people talk about react they are not just talking about a state management library anymore
  - root_axis 2y ago
    Vue and Svelte are just as complex as React, I'd argue Vue often ends up being even more complex than react even though the barrier to entry is a bit lower for novices. If you disagree, I encourage you to link to a mature project on github built with svelte or vue that you regard as an example of simplicity.
- hggigg 2y ago
  The problem is by the time it does everything you need it to do, it's a fat turd again. Your point is like saying C is a lightweight language. It sure is, until you have layered everything else you need on top of it.
  - cogman10 2y ago
    But it is though. Saying react is complex is much like saying C is complex because of OpenGL or SDL. React isn't the ecosystem anymore than C is.

hggigg 2y ago

React is not boring. We have to use a 64 gig machine to build one of our React things and it takes 45 minutes to do so. I'm literally on a meeting now trying to work out how to make it boring again.

Uehreka 2y ago
That sounds like an architecture issue. In 10 years I’ve used React for a wide variety of projects from digital publishing tools to realtime medical dashboards to WebRTC-based videoconferencing apps with 3D graphics. I’ve never seen a build require anything like that much horsepower or time.
- hggigg 2y ago
  Ah yes but you likely aren’t at the mercy of the lowest bidders!
defofboring 2y ago
That’s the definition of boring in tech. Before modern web dev practices my team was notified a dev had started the wipe/reinstall OS process on a 1,000 bare metal lab desktops and servers due to a bug in their deployment script From prior experience I knew only the OS partition had been nuked so far not old data. So my team collected the disks, closed a campus computer, connected disks via USB adapters, shorted the two pins on ATX power supplies to provide power to the disks and booted from the lab machines it was all connected to into a live USB Linux system where we ran recovery tools on ~600-700 SATA disks (some servers had been snapshotted to backup and didn’t need the effort) That was the most interesting day in tech I’ve ever worked and I started my career designing add on boards for a company that sold to Nortel before they imploded; my output literally shipped late 90s-early 00s internet users packets around Noodling if else and for loops day in and day around some biz context I don’t care about but some Harvard grad has seed money to advertise is the lamest; the 2010s, an entire decade if my career and since, has been really boring.

emmanueloga_ 2y ago

I've been using preact and I think it fills the bill of "boring" (the "good" boring) a lot better [1]. -- 1: https://preactjs.com/blog/preact-x https://preactjs.com/blog/preact-x

shepherdjerred 2y ago

100% The biggest change in the last few years has been a shift from Webpack to Vite, which, IMO, is a breath of fresh air.