[Toritori12]

Big part of why FE system are so complex now is because we moved a lot from BE to FE, especially state management. I dont think it is possible to get back to session cookies and keep the "infinite" horizontal scaling that modern BE have.

[1dom]

Yeah, that's what I was referring to mainly - frontend frameworks to help manage complex state in the browser. If you want complex state in the browser, using vanilla JS to do the same clientside state and rendering becomes tedious: it's easier and more fun to shift it back to the backend.

Not sure I fully understand the second bit. Given how much more powerful servers are now (both physical and abstracted) doesn't that vertical scaling mean horizontal scaling is less necessary? If horizontal scaling is necessary, depending on where in the stack you're scaling, the global consistency offered by modern cloud data stores make it more efficient than ever for lots of servers to exchange a session cookie for state and return fully rendered HTML.

[AstroBen]

I think it's more nuanced than that. The original React model of UI = f(state) is pretty simple and solved the state management issue. Building your UI with function composition isn't a massive jump in complexity

..but then they kept adding. And adding. And adding. And adding.. and now where are we? Death by a thousand cuts. 10x the complexity for an additional 7% benefit

[Toritori12]

React is pretty barebones, they keep adding stuff because how ugly the original one looks like and how outdated feels like compared to "modern" ones like Vue, Svelte, etc...

[schwartzworld]

You don’t have to use all that other stuff. React works best if you prioritize function composition. So much of the ecosystem is there to support the people that don’t know what composition is.