3 ms·
This. React was incredibly innovative at a time where the alternatives were some combination of: * Two-way data binding spaghetti * Boilerplate-heavy reactivi
by RussianCow 1y ago
This. React was incredibly innovative at a time where the alternatives were some combination of:
* Two-way data binding spaghetti
* Boilerplate-heavy reactivity
* Opaque, framework-specific magic
* Manual state updates/transitions
React didn't win "by default" (whatever that means), it won because it was better than most of the other options at the time.
I agree that, on purely technical grounds, it isn't as strong of a framework as other competitors anymore, but React is and has always been Good Enough™ for most companies, to the point that it's not worth reaching for anything else most of the time. And I say this as someone who doesn't like most things about modern React.
- andy_ppp 1y ago[flagged]
- RussianCow 1y agoReact was actually pretty simple in the early days. It's gotten significantly more complex because of hooks, suspense, SSR, and other features they've introduced more recently. But I would still take modern React over AngularJS 1 and I think it's far more explicit.
- rimunroe 1y agoThe source code for hooks when they were initially released was actually really straightforward too. It's been many years since I've read through other parts of the source code though.
- johnfn 1y agoAll framework code has magic in it. But I posit that React uses magic internally so that we can write magic-free code. It's like how the Rust compiler contains unsafe code.
- AstroBen 1y agoYeah, that's where the complexity is supposed to be