| As the person who wrote the top comment in the thread that you link to, I will admit: You are right for the most part. The choice to use an unproven library is my fault as it was my choice and it is also my responsibility to deal with the consequences and costs of the instability. This is why I will be removing React Router from my project as soon as I can find a stable and suitable replacement. Recognizing the responsibility for your own actions does not preclude you from being frustrated and at times outright angry at the outcomes of those actions. In this case I (wrongly) assumed that after a 1.0 release the library would be relatively stable and have been repeatedly duped into believing that this time the major version release would be the stable one. I don't really see anywhere that people were issuing an outcry for V4, so I am still confused as to why it was so urgent to release it. It wasn't perfect but it was fine. Unfortunately in my frustration and confusion I chose to write a very strongly worded comment that apparently some people did not like. > To be clear: developers that release libraries and then iterate the API in public do not deserve personal scorn for doing so I have never gotten the impression that react-router was someone's personal library, rather it is a community project that is maintained by notable members of the javascript community and it is my belief that delivering half-baked stuff to the people who counted on them, and who they led to believe could count on them, is not a fair thing to do. I don't believe it is unreasonable to be frustrated with fickle leadership from people who stepped up to lead the project. If they can't deal with the criticism or don't have the time/effort/inclination/whatever to lead in a way that is agreeable to most of the community then perhaps someone else could lead. When projects have thousands of stars on github, making rapid successions of breaking changes throws all of those people for a loop. If you do in fact view the repo as your personal project and want to make huge changes all the time, like every 6 months, I don't think that the version with thousands of stars is really the place to do that. Why not just do it on your own where it isn't going to affect so many people. Note: Neither this, nor my original comment should be taken as personal attacks on the maintainers although I am aware that both are probably over stated. I'm sure they are all extremely talented developers and kind people. |
What I wrote wasn't entirely in response to the HN thread. Similar thoughts about the JS community have been brewing for a while and the discussion prompted me to speak my mind.