[krainboltgreene]

You may want to check the temperature again. The react community is still huge, still growing, and still improving. React jobs are still widely available and new companies get started using react (or transition to react).

You aren't the first person (or the last) to care about payload size to the browser. Everyone cares about that, including the React core team.

[cryptica]

>> React jobs are still widely available

I don't doubt React's effectiveness as an economic tool for job creation. No economic tool is able to turn a simple 1-person job into a complex 100-person job as effectively React does. The Federal Reserve Bank loves React.

But is it the most effective tool for writing web apps? Not by a long shot.

[ng12]

> But is it the most effective tool for writing web apps

What's your preferred alternative, pray tell?

[cryptica]

If you use VueJS without a compiler or bundler during development (and yes, this means no TypeScript), you can achieve an amazingly productive development experience. If you can resist all the tools which try to bait you into adding a bundling step, you won't regret it.

It takes a lot of effort to figure out how to use VueJS without the bundling step and it can feel constraining initially, but the simplicity pays off in the long term.

I'm quite annoyed though that VueJS team has been moving towards TypeScript and bundling. Am I the only person who thinks that front end work is too simple to need type safety?

Front end programming is like riding a bike, after a while, you don't need the training wheels anymore; they just slow you down and deprive you of real enjoyment.

Also, there is a joke my colleagues used to say about front end:

"Front end work is like building a house of cards. If it collapses, no one gets hurt. On the other hand, back end work is like building a house out of wine glasses..."

[ng12]

Can't say I agree. The relative cost of bundling is minimal. I don't really think about my setup at all -- it's such a minute part of my daily workflow.

Anyways, your disdain for front-end development will probably preclude a lot of people from taking your stance seriously.

[cryptica]

If you had actually tried it properly, you would not disagree, it's really that self-evident.

[ng12]

If your goal here is just to gloat about how "everyone else is doing it wrong" then I don't think this is a productive conversation. I was doing web development before bundlers were a thing and I do not miss those days.