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by khasan222 864 days ago
I’ve been writing JavaScript for 15 years professionally, and I must say this comment seems to be made by someone not as familiar with the context here. Moving away from React and frameworks like it would require a radical rethinking of what we expect to do with web apps. Building something like google maps, google docs, figma, are definitely doable with some of these tools, but it is almost impossible to maintain. This comment truly ignore the context of why frameworks like react took off. Jquery is great if you need a slideshow on a page, and maybe just some tracking, and even then, I’ve recently opted to just use vanilla js, with things like webpack build targeting whatever versions I would need. JavaScript programming is complex because making great ux can be a non trivial task.

Please excuse any typos, written on the phone
2 comments
heartbreak 864 days ago
How many React apps actually have an interface approaching the complexity of Figma or even Facebook?

No one is arguing that complex web applications don’t benefit from React and friends. It’s completely overkill for most of the web.

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anthonypasq 864 days ago
why does everyone have this impression that people are using react to render a website that is 5 divs and some images, like where is this perception coming from? do you have any examples at all?

any website that has any sort of meaningful functionality and communication with a server is mostly likely using some sort of framework.

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docmars 864 days ago
Agreed. There is a _lot_ of naivety around how these frameworks are perceived, from people who have never used them, or who come from different programming backgrounds (i.e. not frontend). It's amusing.
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hombre_fatal 864 days ago
Yeah, there's this whole meme on HN where React competes with hand-writing the HTML of your three-page brochure website, a website virtually nobody is building.
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lizardking 864 days ago
A lot of marketing agency development is this sort of brochureware, and to your point they usually aren't using react.
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silent_cal 863 days ago
These crazy libraries might make sense to you because you've been a JS dev for 15 years. JS is supposed to be a basic building block of the web. React places a learning curve in front of the everyday developer that is effectively impossible. It's fine if it's helpful in edge cases, but it shouldn't be the norm. Basic technology should be accessible.
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