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The problem I have with many of such advice: 1) what do you precisely mean and 2) why do you think so. Do you mean the whole field, so from B2B SPA apps to per

The problem I have with many of such advice: 1) what do you precisely mean and 2) why do you think so. Do you mean the whole field, so from B2B SPA apps to personal blogs? "If you want to replace jquery, use Vue!" would be more helpful to understand. The problem is that we don´t know if the advice comes from a "bootcamper" that has only learned Javascript. You know, some people manage to build low-interaction sites that will render a blank page when Javascript is disabled. The "why" is also of interest to see if the advice is applicable. If not react, then why not preact for instance?

OtomotO 2y ago
No bootcamp, university, albeit only a BSc, because I didn't feel like academia afterwards with a full time job and now I've moved on. 9 years of professional experience. Having worked and paid to do so with Java, Scala, Kotlin, Python, JavaScript, Typescript, Python Been working with Rust since 2015, have prior experience with C++, had to work with C, Haskell and logic programming (not prolog) at University. Also did C#, Golang, Lua, Zig and many more. Does that give more authority to my statement? I sincerely hope not!
hirako2000 2y ago
My main dislike for React is that I'm constantly learning React, its intricacies and idiosyncracies. Disproportionate amount of energy I would rather spend learning JavaScript, something that would last. Using React since 2013. Each release is an excitement, until I realise some chunk of concepts which altogether took months to fully grasp, are gone. Some even needed to be unlearned. A lot of abstractions. React doesn't make you a better developer, it makes you a better React developer. I don't feel that with Vue. I don't feel that with most libraries I use.
- qt31415926 2y ago
  > React doesn't make you a better developer, it makes you a better React developer. React's pure component functional style translates really well to nearly every other type of software development.
  - impoppy 2y ago
    It doesn't necessarily mean that React does it right. When building React apps, developers spend too much time on designing architecture for many things that should have been taken care of by the tools they are using. The more I am in web development, be it backend or frontend, the more I'm disappointed that declarative programming is still not a thing. One too many hours wasted on reducing boilerplate, replacing big boilerplate with smaller boilerplate, optimizing boilerplate and writing that boilerplate. While still being far from perfect, other frameworks like Vue and Svelte do great job at making the developer write less boilerplate and more business logic.
    - hirako2000 2y ago
      I agree with that, that's not so specific to react. So I kept it to narrating the main problem I and others have with react, which is that feeling that I keep learning the framework for a variety of reasons that I believe are frustrating developers, those who want to be more than react developers. The non declarative aspect is a problem though, with v19 it now means unbelievably large PRs and time spent to refactor will take place for migrators. Declarative would at least reduce reduce that pain.
  - erokar 2y ago
    Practically every frontend framework uses components. The problem with React is that so many of its abstractions are leaky and forces a lot of accidental complexity on the developer.
    - dansiemens 2y ago
      Which abstractions are leaky? State is complex. There’s not really a way to get around that.
      - yawaramin 2y ago
        Dependency arrays are leaky.
- gejose 2y ago
  > React doesn't make you a better developer, it makes you a better React developer. React's goal isn't to make you a better developer though. It's goal is to make it easier to build non trivial, stateful applications
  - hirako2000 2y ago
    Developers' goal is to become better developers.
  - bdangubic 2y ago
    which you can also do easily without react and 16Gb node_modules folder :)
agumonkey 2y ago
I think most people arguing against react are against "advanced" ui libs at all. simple dom + a thin porcelain like htmx does help you finish most work duties without having to add a whole paradigme over. And anecdotally, if your team is not ready/willing to dig in react, all its benefits will fail to materialize, you'll have a bunch of patched up libs and components trying to do what htmx or similar seem to offer (async actions over REST) for just a few lines in your html template.

OtomotO 2y ago

No bootcamp, university, albeit only a BSc, because I didn't feel like academia afterwards with a full time job and now I've moved on. 9 years of professional experience. Having worked and paid to do so with Java, Scala, Kotlin, Python, JavaScript, Typescript, Python Been working with Rust since 2015, have prior experience with C++, had to work with C, Haskell and logic programming (not prolog) at University. Also did C#, Golang, Lua, Zig and many more. Does that give more authority to my statement? I sincerely hope not!

hirako2000 2y ago

My main dislike for React is that I'm constantly learning React, its intricacies and idiosyncracies. Disproportionate amount of energy I would rather spend learning JavaScript, something that would last. Using React since 2013. Each release is an excitement, until I realise some chunk of concepts which altogether took months to fully grasp, are gone. Some even needed to be unlearned. A lot of abstractions. React doesn't make you a better developer, it makes you a better React developer. I don't feel that with Vue. I don't feel that with most libraries I use.

qt31415926 2y ago
> React doesn't make you a better developer, it makes you a better React developer. React's pure component functional style translates really well to nearly every other type of software development.
- impoppy 2y ago
  It doesn't necessarily mean that React does it right. When building React apps, developers spend too much time on designing architecture for many things that should have been taken care of by the tools they are using. The more I am in web development, be it backend or frontend, the more I'm disappointed that declarative programming is still not a thing. One too many hours wasted on reducing boilerplate, replacing big boilerplate with smaller boilerplate, optimizing boilerplate and writing that boilerplate. While still being far from perfect, other frameworks like Vue and Svelte do great job at making the developer write less boilerplate and more business logic.
  - hirako2000 2y ago
    I agree with that, that's not so specific to react. So I kept it to narrating the main problem I and others have with react, which is that feeling that I keep learning the framework for a variety of reasons that I believe are frustrating developers, those who want to be more than react developers. The non declarative aspect is a problem though, with v19 it now means unbelievably large PRs and time spent to refactor will take place for migrators. Declarative would at least reduce reduce that pain.
- erokar 2y ago
  Practically every frontend framework uses components. The problem with React is that so many of its abstractions are leaky and forces a lot of accidental complexity on the developer.
  - dansiemens 2y ago
    Which abstractions are leaky? State is complex. There’s not really a way to get around that.
    - yawaramin 2y ago
      Dependency arrays are leaky.
gejose 2y ago
> React doesn't make you a better developer, it makes you a better React developer. React's goal isn't to make you a better developer though. It's goal is to make it easier to build non trivial, stateful applications
- hirako2000 2y ago
  Developers' goal is to become better developers.
- bdangubic 2y ago
  which you can also do easily without react and 16Gb node_modules folder :)

agumonkey 2y ago

I think most people arguing against react are against "advanced" ui libs at all. simple dom + a thin porcelain like htmx does help you finish most work duties without having to add a whole paradigme over. And anecdotally, if your team is not ready/willing to dig in react, all its benefits will fail to materialize, you'll have a bunch of patched up libs and components trying to do what htmx or similar seem to offer (async actions over REST) for just a few lines in your html template.