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by shroompasta 1455 days ago
While I agree that Front End "engineering" isn't as complex as other fields, calling it "shameful" is a bit much.

There is a huge requirement out of web apps today that SPAs are more and more required than your simple html + css blog posts.

Posts like these is where I feel the age of HN, that are becoming bitter about fields that were once very simple, ending up complex to suit the needs of the times.

Everywhere I look around, people on HN feel like we're still in the age of blog posts and form submissions, when in reality, there are people trying to port applications like Photoshop towards the web.

If Photoshop was available on the web, wouldn't you think that the Front End required an honest amount of "engineering"

And it doesn't even have to be a front-end heavy application like photoshop - it could just be a simple chat application that needs to be on the forefront of the site while you can still browse.

You can use whatever framework you'd like to solve your "bloat" issue, but the problem is, especially for startups, you're not going to get anywhere near the hiring pool, nor or you going to have an ease of choice for your native platform.

This is what makes React so strong right now.

I wished you had addressed this, instead of just deriding the entire front end community.

1 comments

You are conflating the root comment of this and the OP's point. It's not about SPA. It's about network effect / marketing / cult / lack-principle insanity of frondend or web market that's heavily into React specially.
While I agree that React (for the web) isn't the best SPA out there (I would use Solid or Svelte), It's the most practical simply because of the hiring pool and because of React Native.

Sometimes you have to be practical and give up certain areas for the sake of the whole.

I don't even think React is even that bad as you claim it to be, judging from your past posts.

React Native is one of the best things to ever happen to native development, removing the atrocity that is the separation of development of apple and android - one of the most productivity inhibiting factors to a startup out there.

This is why react is so strong.

I don't think this is called practicality. React is neither even good in practice nor in theory. "Hiring pool" reason is not backing practicality at all. React Native fall into the same "Hiring pool" argument which is not practicality.
I take absolutely nothing noteworthy of your comment at all other than that you have a bias that you need to put in check.