[nfw2]

Because the ux and dx are better once you reach a certain amount of complexity. Companies know what is best for their business.

There were will always be a group of devs that don’t like it because it isn’t the same web as in their heyday, and they all will eagerly pile on anything remotely JS-critical is posted on HN.

There is a selection bias to the comments that does not accurately reflect the industry opinion.

[arp242]

> Companies know what is best for their business.

"Companies" don't really know anything. The decisions get made by people, with all the flaws that people have. I have seen many developers make decisions that are detrimental to the company.

I do agree that there is a section of HN that will pile on these kind of topics, and I have flagged dozens of low-effort swiped against JS over the years that add nothing.

But two things can be true at the same time:

1. there is an unpleasant section of HN that will rant about all things JS, and

2. SPAs (or our current approach to them) bring a lot of downsides and are often not worth it.

Are entirely compatible.

[nfw2]

I agree there are tradeoffs to SPAs, and I shouldn't have implied that companies are a perfect decision-making apparatus.

That said, I think if a certain technology becomes an industry standard, especially one that demonstrates some staying power, as React has, it should not be dismissed out-of-hand, and most of this comments section is doing.

[arp242]

There are probably more companies not using React than are. Words like "industry standard" don't really mean much. Languages like Ruby or Go are widely used and here to stay, yet there are also many people who don't like it – and that's okay.

There's a lot of self-sorting going on here; I stopped doing the frontend thing because I didn't like the way things were going and even tepid critique of this was (and still is) often met with completely out of proportion aggression, vitriol, and insults. I got more hate and vitriol over my "Why I'm using jQuery in 2018" post than the rest of my website combined. It feels like engaging on the Israel/Palestine debate or something.

Of course every community self-sorts to a degree. That's okay. I would never presume to critique React on a React thread. But "frontend" is very broad and also includes non-React.

Your comments here are fine, but at the same time it also strongly suggests that SPAs are the only way to build good frontends and that everyone who disagrees is just some old coot stuck in their ways. Both of which are rather tiring tropes, and especially that second one is pretty dismissive, if not downright insulting.

So I kind of gave up on this years ago. It's easy to reach consensus if you chase away everyone who disagrees.

[endemic]

JS-heavy sites are frustrating to me due to generally worse UX — links can’t be opened in a new tab, because they’re not actually anchor tags. Forms can’t be submitted by the “return” key. Navigation using back/forward buttons is broken. There might be a few companies who get it right, but most don’t.

[mrthrowaway999]

How is increased FCP, LCP, ttvc better ux and DX? We've had hard data that decreasing page load time make for better user experience[0].

Please don't make this an Us vs. Them thing.

[0]: http://glinden.blogspot.com/2006/11/marissa-mayer-at-web-20....

[nfw2]

The OP was asking for an explanation why the preferences of the industry diverge from the preferences of this comment section. The question itself identifies two groups.

The top comment on this page said the frontend community seems like a jobs program. It's interesting that you are only criticizing the view you disagree with as being too divisive.

[shadowgovt]

Because we also have hard data that users absolutely hate a blank or frozen screen and "CONFIRM FORM RESUBMISSION." Users are allowed to hate multiple things at the same time and it's up to the web developers to stack rank those.