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by lolinder 1510 days ago
The problem there isn't with React, it's with people who build websites out of a tool that's designed for huge applications.

Most websites shouldn't be built with React. Most single-story buildings shouldn't be built out of steel I beams. That doesn't make them a bad material, it just means you shouldn't use them if a simpler material will do.

4 comments

> Most single-story buildings shouldn't be built out of steel I beams.

But many are! This is the issue. 10-50x the effort, complexity, hours, expense. Lots and lots of steel, everywhere, because managers heard that Megacorp uses steel and now insist on it.

Steel beams everywhere.

Time to develop a low-JS vanilla SPA framework called "Jet Fuel"
Hey actually React has nothing to do with Megacorp at all. We adopted React in 2015 on a small team (less than 10 engineers) as did many other small startups at that time. The decision to use React on a small team is the same as it would be on a large team: It dramatically changes frontend development. It makes this career worth while. I did 5 years before React, and now still using React 7 years after with no competitor in sight.

I don't use React because I'm being forced to. We chose React!

Depends on the problem that small team is solving. I've used SPAs on several "small" teams (Angular*, Backbone.js) and they are very effective for solving the kind of problems that are otherwise solved by native applications (winforms and the like). When you have hundreds or thousands of forms / screens in a system then SPAs provide a large reduction in complexity.

For websites: we all like to dump on PHP but it was literally designed to build websites with relatively limited features / large reach - which covers a large swathe of the web.

So SPA: good for ERPs, CRMs etc but bad for webshops, social networks, TODO apps, news sites, Streaming sites, blogs etc.

[Why Angular? React is technically interesting, especially that it's build around the Rx pattern popularized in dotnet, however I have a deep-seated hate for Facebook for their key part in making Brexit happen which trumps any technical merit. Vue wasn't a thing back then]

This 1000x. Every nail looks like a React app. Most frameworks are overkill for most sites/apps. There are definitely ones that need that level of architecture, but that isn't most of the time.
Steel is superior to wood in almost every way. Currently they are almost the same price as LVL beams with out the 4+ back order wait.
Thank you sir, for you sir comment of sanity