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Can’t help being sarcastic: I have seen a couple of “I ditched React” post-mortems that apparently start with “I decided to stop adding poorly vetted dependenc

Can’t help being sarcastic: I have seen a couple of “I ditched React” post-mortems that apparently start with “I decided to stop adding poorly vetted dependencies with poor package maintenance practices”, just worded differently. It is unsurprising to me if the router library is the first accused. When I was starting with a new project where I am using React, I went through a bunch of router libraries. There are tons, it seems like a low-hanging fruit with many implementations and many people trying to make a living off theirs (can’t blame them for it, unless they make changes for the sake of making changes and to incentivise people to pay for support). Ultimately, I found something off in every one, so I… just decided to not use any! That is the thing, React is a small rendering library[0] and you are free to build whatever you want around it with as many or as few dependencies as you want. If the ecosystem is popular enough, there will be dependency tree monsters (simply because the ecosystem is extensive and using many dependencies allows package authors to make something impressive with less effort); switching to a less popular ecosystem as a way of dealing with that seems like a solution but a bit of a heavy-handed one. [0] Though under Vercel it does seem to suffer from a bit of feature creep, RSC and all that, it is still pretty lean and as pointed out has two packages total in its dependency tree (some might say it’s two too many, but it is a far cry from dependency hell).

emseetech 2y ago
In reality though, making a case to use only the React library in a minimalist setup is just as hard to convince a team filled with people who came up in the past 10 years of front-end development as it is to convince them of using HTMX or web components. Nowadays, when people use React they use the whole kit-and-caboodle, and when they say React they mean all of it. Personally, I avoid React because I don't want a compile step. I do everything I can to avoid one. And if I do need to use a framework like React, I prefer to isolate it to exactly where I need it instead of using it to build a whole site.
- strogonoff 2y ago
  For the first part: yes, but that is why I think it is important to stress dependency vetting. For the second part, a couple of times when I had to add a bit of purely client-side reactivity to something pre-existing but did not want to introduce any build step I simply aliased createElement() to el(). That said, personally I prefer TypeScript for a project of any size, so build step is implied and I can simply not think about converting JSX. Webpack triggers bad memories but esbuild is reasonable.
  - emseetech 2y ago
    FYI I use jsdoc for typing in my IDE so I get the benefit of types without the build step.
    - strogonoff 2y ago
      I like when it simply does not compile, which also helps if there are other various team members (or future me) who can not always be trusted to ignore typing errors. Also, I may be wrong, but I feel like JSDoc types are a bit limiting (and more verbose & extra effort) compared to inline TypeScript. Coming from Python, I really enjoy the typing power of TS and do not want to compromise on that…
      - emseetech 2y ago
        I prefer to just run tsc to check for type errors on GitHub commits instead of needing them for every change. And yeah inline types are more verbose but I prefer to use .d.ts files for definitions and then declare with a comment (vim lets me move to definitions with ctrl-] which is nice). I also come from a Go background so I actively don't like using the more esoteric and complex types that typescript provides.
nine_k 2y ago
> React is a small rendering library Sorry, can't agree. React is a state management library that also implements efficient rendering on top of the DOM diff it computes as it propagates the state changes. This allows React apps to remain so simple (one mostly linear function per component) and so composable without turning into an unmanageable dish of callback / future spaghetti. There is a number of other VDOM libraries, but what sets React apart is the data / state flow strictly in one direction. This allows to reap many of the benefits of functional programming along the way, like everything the developer sees being immutable; not a coincidence. Regarding the size, preact [1] is mostly API-compatible, but also absurdly small (3-4 kB minified), actually smaller than HTMX (10 kB). But with preact you likely also want preact-iso, so the size grows a little bit. [1]: https://preactjs.com/ https://preactjs.com/
- mplewis 2y ago
  React notoriously doesn't come with enough state management to properly manage state in anything larger than trivial.
  - nine_k 2y ago
    React comes with useState, useMemo, and useCallback, which is actually enough, but it may be too low-level when you think e.g. in terms of a huge interactive form. It's easy to write your own useWhatever based on these which would factor out your common boilerplate. I suspect HTMX also does not come with every possible battery included, judging by the proliferation of libraries for HTMX-based projects. Modularity is a strength.
    - agos 2y ago
      it is enough in the sense that NAND gates are enough to build computers. Yes, you can write a complex application using only those, and yes it's easy to write hooks to keep the boilerplate low - although Context still feels like too much boilerplate - but as complexity grows it's quite natural to want to share state between distant parts of the application, and then you're left choosing between lifting staten and prop drilling (not great) or Context and massive, frequent rerenderings. Hence the need for third party state management solutions

emseetech 2y ago

In reality though, making a case to use only the React library in a minimalist setup is just as hard to convince a team filled with people who came up in the past 10 years of front-end development as it is to convince them of using HTMX or web components. Nowadays, when people use React they use the whole kit-and-caboodle, and when they say React they mean all of it. Personally, I avoid React because I don't want a compile step. I do everything I can to avoid one. And if I do need to use a framework like React, I prefer to isolate it to exactly where I need it instead of using it to build a whole site.

strogonoff 2y ago
For the first part: yes, but that is why I think it is important to stress dependency vetting. For the second part, a couple of times when I had to add a bit of purely client-side reactivity to something pre-existing but did not want to introduce any build step I simply aliased createElement() to el(). That said, personally I prefer TypeScript for a project of any size, so build step is implied and I can simply not think about converting JSX. Webpack triggers bad memories but esbuild is reasonable.
- emseetech 2y ago
  FYI I use jsdoc for typing in my IDE so I get the benefit of types without the build step.
  - strogonoff 2y ago
    I like when it simply does not compile, which also helps if there are other various team members (or future me) who can not always be trusted to ignore typing errors. Also, I may be wrong, but I feel like JSDoc types are a bit limiting (and more verbose & extra effort) compared to inline TypeScript. Coming from Python, I really enjoy the typing power of TS and do not want to compromise on that…
    - emseetech 2y ago
      I prefer to just run tsc to check for type errors on GitHub commits instead of needing them for every change. And yeah inline types are more verbose but I prefer to use .d.ts files for definitions and then declare with a comment (vim lets me move to definitions with ctrl-] which is nice). I also come from a Go background so I actively don't like using the more esoteric and complex types that typescript provides.

nine_k 2y ago

> React is a small rendering library Sorry, can't agree. React is a state management library that also implements efficient rendering on top of the DOM diff it computes as it propagates the state changes. This allows React apps to remain so simple (one mostly linear function per component) and so composable without turning into an unmanageable dish of callback / future spaghetti. There is a number of other VDOM libraries, but what sets React apart is the data / state flow strictly in one direction. This allows to reap many of the benefits of functional programming along the way, like everything the developer sees being immutable; not a coincidence. Regarding the size, preact [1] is mostly API-compatible, but also absurdly small (3-4 kB minified), actually smaller than HTMX (10 kB). But with preact you likely also want preact-iso, so the size grows a little bit. [1]: https://preactjs.com/ https://preactjs.com/

mplewis 2y ago
React notoriously doesn't come with enough state management to properly manage state in anything larger than trivial.
- nine_k 2y ago
  React comes with useState, useMemo, and useCallback, which is actually enough, but it may be too low-level when you think e.g. in terms of a huge interactive form. It's easy to write your own useWhatever based on these which would factor out your common boilerplate. I suspect HTMX also does not come with every possible battery included, judging by the proliferation of libraries for HTMX-based projects. Modularity is a strength.
  - agos 2y ago
    it is enough in the sense that NAND gates are enough to build computers. Yes, you can write a complex application using only those, and yes it's easy to write hooks to keep the boilerplate low - although Context still feels like too much boilerplate - but as complexity grows it's quite natural to want to share state between distant parts of the application, and then you're left choosing between lifting staten and prop drilling (not great) or Context and massive, frequent rerenderings. Hence the need for third party state management solutions