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> JS frameworks move really quickly React is a lot more stable than I think you're giving it credit for. > And the stability also means that more time is spen

> JS frameworks move really quickly React is a lot more stable than I think you're giving it credit for. > And the stability also means that more time is spent on delivering features Frameworks/libs also exist to save you time, thus letting you spend more time on delivering features. And fwiw, the obsidian team seems to agree in principle. Your link goes to a forum post of some kind, in which one may find a link to obsidian's third party deps: https://help.obsidian.md/credits#Third+party+acknowledgements https://help.obsidian.md/credits#Third+party+acknowledgement... These do not include React, but do include: - i18next - lezer - moment.js Plus a bunch of others. Why didn't obsidian write their own date lib and chose to use moment.js? Because it saved them time, despite the fact that moment.js does make changes, and many people are moving on from it in any case. The idea that not using a frontend framework will let you focus on delivering features seems reductive, and the obsidian anecdote doesn't support the idea anyway. Whatever you're building, it's never a bad idea to deeply understand the tradeoffs that using a library will bring. Obsidian probably couldn't accept the downsides of React due to them needing a bunch of custom renderers for content, which React makes harder. But that is likely a rare constraint for apps in general. Generally speaking, libs like react exist to save you time and help you focus on delivering features.

lloydatkinson 1y ago
> React is a lot more stable than I think you're giving it credit for. A lot of the HN zeitgegist would have you believe React is the opposite, sadly.
- CaptainOfCoit 1y ago
  The React ecosystem moves really quickly, and likes to re-invent wheels. But React core APIs remain relatively stable, I've been using React the same way for many years at this point, and you can ignore the parts you don't like, like I'm ignoring hooks and haven't found a single use case where I needed them.
  - adithyassekhar 1y ago
    Could you please tell me how are you avoiding hooks? You're not using useState or useEffects?
    - CaptainOfCoit 1y ago
      I mainly use React via Reagent in ClojureScript, and literally have no use cases where I need to use useState/useEffects for anything. Turning it around, what exactly are you unable to do without useState/useEffects?
      - adithyassekhar 1y ago
        When I want to memoize something slightly complex, for simplicity's sake let's say sorting an array of objects based on one of it's keys. I can put that in a useMemo and it won't sort it again when the page eventually rerenders for some reason. Usually that array is mapped elsewhere and those child components might also re render if the array is recalculated. useEffects are when I need to call something outside of react, or when the page gets mounted or I need to call a function when something changes. I'm still fairly new to this, the above examples may scream bad architecture to those more experienced, all criticisms welcome :)
        Octoth0rpe 1y ago
        > all criticisms welcome :) No criticism really. Your useMemo example is the right use. Your useEffect use is fine, but for things like api calls (which 'call something outside of react' may refer to), you're often better leaning on something like react-query, which is of course built on top of useEffect. So still the right tool, but let others handle many of the sharp edges around that problem.
        adithyassekhar 1y ago
        Thanks. I've started with rtk and saga hence the useEffect. I've since moved to rtk query.
mickael-kerjean 1y ago
> React is a lot more stable than I think you're giving it credit for. That's until you have to use it in a real project, for a long time the go to solution was the facebook maintained CRA which is now deprecated. I have spent a lot more time than I'd like to admit migrating webpack versions when it was considered best practises to use class component with decorator but decorator never was standardised in the browser and was never able to get a clean project where running npm install would not give scary warning our project had high vulnerability that was dependencies of dependencies in CRA to the point that it got me wondered that even if the creator of react facebook can't get their shit together, the whole ecosystem is doomed. I have been outside the ecosystem for a year and looking at the shit show that is nextjs it seems things are even worse than before.
- Octoth0rpe 1y ago
  These are good points, but many of them aren't specific to React, and in fact likely apply if you're rolling most of your own code. For example, the app that OP used to start the conversation uses webpack (https://help.obsidian.md/credits#Third+party+acknowledgements https://help.obsidian.md/credits#Third+party+acknowledgement...). > running npm install would not give you a dozen high vulnerability package Yes, this is a serious problem, but mostly an npm messaging problem: https://overreacted.io/npm-audit-broken-by-design/ https://overreacted.io/npm-audit-broken-by-design/
  - csande17 1y ago
    Dubious "regular expression denial of service" vulnerabilities seem like a general issue with the CVE bureaucracy lately. Like, maybe CVE-2020-10735 had a point that Python's default "int" type having unbounded size and a quadratic-time "str()" was a bit of a footgun, but now it's getting to a point where any use of backtracking in any context is just asking for a "high severity" ticket from the regex police.
- whizzter 1y ago
  I agree with the Next shitshow, but webpack/CRA was always shaky while Vite's sane defaults (and great reloading) has been a great improvement for us outside of the Next world and functional components now feels like a fairly non-error prone and simple way to work so I don't see that going away for a long time (and has already lasted a bunch of years). I think the only shaky moving part for us right now is styled components being left behind due to the RSC changes, but there's both mostly source compatible rewrites as well as perhaps even better alternatives (vanilla-extract).
actinium226 1y ago
> React is a lot more stable than I think you're giving it credit for. Hooks are only 5 years old. The docs were revamped 2 years ago and there's lots of dead links to the old docs page which has a scary warning "These docs are old and won’t be updated." Create-react-app was deprecated in February of this year and in their blog post they tell you to use frameworks like Next.js. And then there's the ecosystem. Next.js introduced app router 3 years ago and lots of docs for libraries still assume you're using pages router. Remix is now react router v7, and I have no idea what's going on with all this Tanstack stuff. There's a new typescript compiler called "Speedy Web Compiler" which just came out in April and as a result Vite now has 4 options for creating a new React project: react, react-ts, react-swc, react-swc-ts Meanwhile moment.js has had 5 releases in the last 4 years. 3 of them in 2022 and 2 in 2023.
- Octoth0rpe 1y ago
  > Hooks are only 5 years old 7. Worth saying that React really only took off 9-10 years ago, so hooks are damn near the beginning of time for _most_ react devs. > The docs were revamped 2 years ago and there's lots of dead links to the old docs page which has a scary warning "These docs are old and won’t be updated. IMO those are not dead links. A link is 'dead' if it links to a page that doesn't exist. Links to old pages with warnings are appropriate in many cases. Many projects are using older versions of react, and devs need to look up info. Not sure this should be seen as a problem. > Create-react-app was deprecated in February of this year and in their blog post they tell you to use frameworks like Next.js. Not sure why this is a problem. A very early tool got deprecated, and the react docs recommend the current paradigm. It's not like they're changing their getting started guidance every month, or even every year. > Remix is now react router v7 If this is a bitch fest about React, then the react docs and CRA are fair game, but remix isn't IMO.
  - actinium226 1y ago
    None of these are problems taken separately, but put together they're pretty frustrating. Hooks being 5 years old and being the predominant tool for certain tasks shows that the community only figured out how to solve a particular problem 5 years ago. Compare that, in terms of stability, to Python having coming up with the idea of packages a long time ago, and packages are now a stable part of the ecosystem (packaging is another story which I'll get to shortly). Revamping the docs is not a problem by itself, but take a look at Python or Django, their docs have the same look and feel for older versions of the code. It's totally a minor problem, and if it were the only one I wouldn't be complaining here, but with the plethora of problems it starts to feel like death by a thousand papercuts. > Create-react-app was deprecated Going back to Python packaging, while it's much better than C/C++ packaging, people still love to complain about it! That said, pip is not deprecated. For React to just abandon the idea of helping users to create a project and telling them to "go bother someone else about it" does not seems like something a stable ecosystem would do. > If this is a bitch fest about React, then the react docs and CRA are fair game, but remix isn't IMO. It absolutely is a bitch fest about React because I inherited a simple site that should have never used React in the first place and it makes it so hard to do simple things without reinventing the wheel, but anyway, I'd say the ecosystem is fair game now that CRA is deprecated and the docs themselves tell you to go to Next or Vite or React Router or Tanstack. Anyway, the point is that while React might be relatively stable from the point of view of the larger javascript ecosystem, it's still way less stable than it should be and way less stable than browser APIs.
gg2222 1y ago
Unrelated to the topic, but wow, they're still using moment? I thought it was kind of deprecated and been trying to use other libs.
- dotandimet 1y ago
  I think most of the complaints about moment are that it's really big (because of i18n and timezones). Obsidian isn't a web page/app, so it doesn't need to optimize bundle size too much.
  - ohthatsnotright 1y ago
    It's unexpectedly mutable unless you've closely read the documentation, been bitten by the mutations, or are doing very simple date manipulations. It's a great library, but it does need fewer footguns. date-fns is a good alternative.
thepianodan 1y ago
> React is a lot more stable than I think you're giving it credit for. I'm glad they take good care of backwards compatibility. React was the most common example, I didn't intend to target it specifically. Not all frameworks are like this though. Svelte 5 introduced many breaking changes, with plans to deprecate the classic Svelte 4 syntax. So that forces many projects to spend time migrating to the newer version. > The idea that not using a frontend framework will let you focus on delivering features seems reductive... Agreed, appreciate the healthy arguments. :)
fud101 1y ago
[flagged]

lloydatkinson 1y ago

> React is a lot more stable than I think you're giving it credit for. A lot of the HN zeitgegist would have you believe React is the opposite, sadly.

CaptainOfCoit 1y ago
The React ecosystem moves really quickly, and likes to re-invent wheels. But React core APIs remain relatively stable, I've been using React the same way for many years at this point, and you can ignore the parts you don't like, like I'm ignoring hooks and haven't found a single use case where I needed them.
- adithyassekhar 1y ago
  Could you please tell me how are you avoiding hooks? You're not using useState or useEffects?
  - CaptainOfCoit 1y ago
    I mainly use React via Reagent in ClojureScript, and literally have no use cases where I need to use useState/useEffects for anything. Turning it around, what exactly are you unable to do without useState/useEffects?
    - adithyassekhar 1y ago
      When I want to memoize something slightly complex, for simplicity's sake let's say sorting an array of objects based on one of it's keys. I can put that in a useMemo and it won't sort it again when the page eventually rerenders for some reason. Usually that array is mapped elsewhere and those child components might also re render if the array is recalculated. useEffects are when I need to call something outside of react, or when the page gets mounted or I need to call a function when something changes. I'm still fairly new to this, the above examples may scream bad architecture to those more experienced, all criticisms welcome :)
      - Octoth0rpe 1y ago
        > all criticisms welcome :) No criticism really. Your useMemo example is the right use. Your useEffect use is fine, but for things like api calls (which 'call something outside of react' may refer to), you're often better leaning on something like react-query, which is of course built on top of useEffect. So still the right tool, but let others handle many of the sharp edges around that problem.
        adithyassekhar 1y ago
        Thanks. I've started with rtk and saga hence the useEffect. I've since moved to rtk query.

mickael-kerjean 1y ago

> React is a lot more stable than I think you're giving it credit for. That's until you have to use it in a real project, for a long time the go to solution was the facebook maintained CRA which is now deprecated. I have spent a lot more time than I'd like to admit migrating webpack versions when it was considered best practises to use class component with decorator but decorator never was standardised in the browser and was never able to get a clean project where running npm install would not give scary warning our project had high vulnerability that was dependencies of dependencies in CRA to the point that it got me wondered that even if the creator of react facebook can't get their shit together, the whole ecosystem is doomed. I have been outside the ecosystem for a year and looking at the shit show that is nextjs it seems things are even worse than before.

Octoth0rpe 1y ago
These are good points, but many of them aren't specific to React, and in fact likely apply if you're rolling most of your own code. For example, the app that OP used to start the conversation uses webpack (https://help.obsidian.md/credits#Third+party+acknowledgements https://help.obsidian.md/credits#Third+party+acknowledgement...). > running npm install would not give you a dozen high vulnerability package Yes, this is a serious problem, but mostly an npm messaging problem: https://overreacted.io/npm-audit-broken-by-design/ https://overreacted.io/npm-audit-broken-by-design/
- csande17 1y ago
  Dubious "regular expression denial of service" vulnerabilities seem like a general issue with the CVE bureaucracy lately. Like, maybe CVE-2020-10735 had a point that Python's default "int" type having unbounded size and a quadratic-time "str()" was a bit of a footgun, but now it's getting to a point where any use of backtracking in any context is just asking for a "high severity" ticket from the regex police.
whizzter 1y ago
I agree with the Next shitshow, but webpack/CRA was always shaky while Vite's sane defaults (and great reloading) has been a great improvement for us outside of the Next world and functional components now feels like a fairly non-error prone and simple way to work so I don't see that going away for a long time (and has already lasted a bunch of years). I think the only shaky moving part for us right now is styled components being left behind due to the RSC changes, but there's both mostly source compatible rewrites as well as perhaps even better alternatives (vanilla-extract).

actinium226 1y ago

> React is a lot more stable than I think you're giving it credit for. Hooks are only 5 years old. The docs were revamped 2 years ago and there's lots of dead links to the old docs page which has a scary warning "These docs are old and won’t be updated." Create-react-app was deprecated in February of this year and in their blog post they tell you to use frameworks like Next.js. And then there's the ecosystem. Next.js introduced app router 3 years ago and lots of docs for libraries still assume you're using pages router. Remix is now react router v7, and I have no idea what's going on with all this Tanstack stuff. There's a new typescript compiler called "Speedy Web Compiler" which just came out in April and as a result Vite now has 4 options for creating a new React project: react, react-ts, react-swc, react-swc-ts Meanwhile moment.js has had 5 releases in the last 4 years. 3 of them in 2022 and 2 in 2023.

Octoth0rpe 1y ago
> Hooks are only 5 years old 7. Worth saying that React really only took off 9-10 years ago, so hooks are damn near the beginning of time for _most_ react devs. > The docs were revamped 2 years ago and there's lots of dead links to the old docs page which has a scary warning "These docs are old and won’t be updated. IMO those are not dead links. A link is 'dead' if it links to a page that doesn't exist. Links to old pages with warnings are appropriate in many cases. Many projects are using older versions of react, and devs need to look up info. Not sure this should be seen as a problem. > Create-react-app was deprecated in February of this year and in their blog post they tell you to use frameworks like Next.js. Not sure why this is a problem. A very early tool got deprecated, and the react docs recommend the current paradigm. It's not like they're changing their getting started guidance every month, or even every year. > Remix is now react router v7 If this is a bitch fest about React, then the react docs and CRA are fair game, but remix isn't IMO.
- actinium226 1y ago
  None of these are problems taken separately, but put together they're pretty frustrating. Hooks being 5 years old and being the predominant tool for certain tasks shows that the community only figured out how to solve a particular problem 5 years ago. Compare that, in terms of stability, to Python having coming up with the idea of packages a long time ago, and packages are now a stable part of the ecosystem (packaging is another story which I'll get to shortly). Revamping the docs is not a problem by itself, but take a look at Python or Django, their docs have the same look and feel for older versions of the code. It's totally a minor problem, and if it were the only one I wouldn't be complaining here, but with the plethora of problems it starts to feel like death by a thousand papercuts. > Create-react-app was deprecated Going back to Python packaging, while it's much better than C/C++ packaging, people still love to complain about it! That said, pip is not deprecated. For React to just abandon the idea of helping users to create a project and telling them to "go bother someone else about it" does not seems like something a stable ecosystem would do. > If this is a bitch fest about React, then the react docs and CRA are fair game, but remix isn't IMO. It absolutely is a bitch fest about React because I inherited a simple site that should have never used React in the first place and it makes it so hard to do simple things without reinventing the wheel, but anyway, I'd say the ecosystem is fair game now that CRA is deprecated and the docs themselves tell you to go to Next or Vite or React Router or Tanstack. Anyway, the point is that while React might be relatively stable from the point of view of the larger javascript ecosystem, it's still way less stable than it should be and way less stable than browser APIs.

gg2222 1y ago

Unrelated to the topic, but wow, they're still using moment? I thought it was kind of deprecated and been trying to use other libs.

dotandimet 1y ago
I think most of the complaints about moment are that it's really big (because of i18n and timezones). Obsidian isn't a web page/app, so it doesn't need to optimize bundle size too much.
- ohthatsnotright 1y ago
  It's unexpectedly mutable unless you've closely read the documentation, been bitten by the mutations, or are doing very simple date manipulations. It's a great library, but it does need fewer footguns. date-fns is a good alternative.

thepianodan 1y ago

> React is a lot more stable than I think you're giving it credit for. I'm glad they take good care of backwards compatibility. React was the most common example, I didn't intend to target it specifically. Not all frameworks are like this though. Svelte 5 introduced many breaking changes, with plans to deprecate the classic Svelte 4 syntax. So that forces many projects to spend time migrating to the newer version. > The idea that not using a frontend framework will let you focus on delivering features seems reductive... Agreed, appreciate the healthy arguments. :)

fud101 1y ago

[flagged]