[throwanem]

I agree that that tight coupling is a smell, but it's also not required; the Apollo (GraphQL) tooling offers it and some of the documentation encourages it for new users, but not using it is a first-class option too. That's the paradigm around which (for example) the entire application for which I recently co-led development is built. We didn't have any trouble using it, and while replacing GQL with REST would still be a heavy lift just due to the fact that it's a highly data-driven application for which we also maintain our own backend, we wouldn't need to touch the UI to make that change.

I don't love that the docs tend somewhat to encourage the API option with tighter coupling between UI and data, and the Apollo documentation is in general pretty lightweight by my standards. To criticize on that basis is fair. But it isn't anything like forced, and to write off GraphQL or React as "cancerous" on account of someone having made a less than optimal decision in how to use them seems premature.

[blakehaswell]

> to write off GraphQL or React as "cancerous" on account of someone having made a less than optimal decision in how to use them seems premature.

Apologies, cancerous isn't how I'd describe it, but the sentiment of the quote did resonate. "Tightly coupled" is more representative of my concern.

Thanks for the counter-example!