Many of the competitors springing up define themselves in terms of React, either as an improvement or a foil. But if you're just trying to get things done, it's hard to go wrong with it - and in a practical sense, not a "nobody got fired" sense.
(Of course, even React itself has gotten fairly complex with Hooks, Suspense and the dreaded Server Components.)
What are some specific sites you've seen that adopted react and ended up worse as a result of it?
> doesn't have a "relatively small surface" any more, because even the React team doesn't recommend that you use "just" React
Isn't this evidence of it having a relatively small surface area that frameworks and other tools can build on top of, much like html, css etc?
React is just a better approach to building all-encompassing SPAs.
(We have no external webapps because my company, funny enough, builds a JavaScript framework!)
Svelte was first released in 2016 and has become bigger than its original creator, Rich Harris. It has quite a thriving ecosystem and a big community. The tooling around it is more mature than React's has ever been.
> surface is so small
I actually find the opposite to be true. React still has a relatively small API surface area. One-way data flow makes it easier to understand. However, a smaller surface means arguably less expressivity, so I think Svelte's bigger learning curve is worth it. You can learn about 90% of React in a weekend and be productive. You can learn about 20% of Svelte in a weekend and also be somewhat productive, but you need to learn about 60-70% more to use Svelte as it's intended, rather than as a React alternative.
I wouldn't be surprised to see some movement toward simpler but equally robust frameworks like Vue or Svelte.
I contract for a few companies and everyone seems to have a different take on the industry standard.
React may well be biggest, but I don't think it's possible dominance is the reason there are fewer framework posts on HN recently.
That's just another hot take which makes no sense if you think about it. Being able to fit complex features into already existing abstractions is an even more sought after skill with frameworks than without. Frameworks exist to standardize architecture, not to mitigate skill issues.
This take really does not take into account the huge value added of 1) not having to roll your own SPA code and 2) the availability of a large workforce that is all familiar with a common design paradigm.
I think the reason these aren’t prominent on HN is because the community here is overwhelmingly skeptical of, if not hostile to, new developments and exploration in the FE/JS space… and because the FE/JS community knows that and is likewise reticent to subject itself to that.
That said, it is true that React is a formidable incumbent, and that quite a lot of the space has coalesced around it. I don’t think that’s set in stone, I even think there’s at least some churn coming sooner rather than later. But I don’t expect that to make huge waves on HN unless and until it’s well underway.
The React team has done a great job of being generic enough for a broad range of use cases. As new use-cases arise, someone can build a new framework to support it. SSR has gotten much more popular than the SPA style, and the core React team has moved to support it with server side components.
If they can continue to follow the innovators, React will continue to dominate the front end landscape.
This isn't far from reality these days
Irrespective of the merits of React, it is sad to see the monoculture that has formed around it. I get the same kind of vibes as I did back when Java was everywhere, and comp sci graduates used to have the impression that Java = programming.
AI is new and of interest to lots of people so its closer to a lifestyle post at this point than it is a pytorch post that most people would not even click on.
Why would things not be getting political?
I've been on here for 15 years and definitely feel phases when it seems like a lull because I am personally not interested in the current hype.
Side note: A few months ago, I swear I saw about 150 different databases I had never heard of on here.
It's solved by you going to the new page, reading every submission, and upvoting the interesting ones. Incentivize that.
People, definitely on reddit, are behaving very different as they see they talk to someone who has nothing to lose and where they cannot expect much in return; less warmongering, less dragging on about a subject I was done with 40 comments ago and only 1-2 downvotes max where people commenting a similar opinion under a known name or handle get 50.
For me a solution to try is random usernames and changing those when you get doxxed. Nicknames or the same handles across sites won’t work.
I think that was all mostly about the, very long overdue, burst of advancements in JS engines that IE was holding back for soooo long. Everyone wanted to make THE library that had the best, most efficient, DOM abstraction possible, while taking advantage of any new speed gains the competing engines would release every week. It was a pretty cool time looking back on it but, the competition in that space has stalled and what's left is good and boring enough to easily get by with on any basic project. It's still not great, but that's just how front-end dev work is.
They all had to go back to React for it to write code for them :D
Sometimes I wonder if anyone clutching their pearls about LLM stuff being able to replace them has actually done any real valuable work as dev.
For the next couple of years problems will not be technical but business and marketing. No programming framework is going to help.
I remember some people taking a little longer to adopt them either cause it wasn’t necessary or cause it didn’t click right away, but eventually everyone learned how to use em, and no one complains about them cause they’re just a tool you use if you use React (which is the framework of choice for most companies).
Honestly, the reaction I often see from HN around most frontend topics usually doesn’t match what the frontend and full stack devs I interact with regularly are saying. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like we all love React and want to switch state management libraries every week; it’s that React is fine, the ecosystem is fine, and we specifically don’t use every library that comes out week after week.
But yeah, JS frameworks seem to have run their course. The corporate world appears to have settled on React. The new thing is, look what I did by futzing with AI.
Angular is officially deprecated, and the others are distant also-rans at this point. React Native has also almost completely taken over iOS development. Thank god we can all just agree on a baseline to work from finally.
We're using Vue here and missed the memo about it being an also run :)
I don't hate Vue and I wouldn't judge anyone for choosing it, but my question is... why? It just seems like that entire community is set on reinventing every React feature with a two year delay.
Snark or lack of knowledge?
So it seems people mostly settled on React. They're grumpy about it but it does the job and there seems to be no alternative compelling enough to complain about.
Even said there were almost no cross browser issues.
JS developers: hey here's an update to a library that's been around for 8 years HN: Why are there new JS frameworks every day???
Also HN: Why aren't people posting about JavaScript here?
Edit: I'd fix the formatting but it's not worth it, HN can't bother to interpret a line break, I can't be bothered to accomodate.
I understand it can be annoying to see posts you disagree with and dislike. Many people jump from that to a general image of the community as hostile to their viewpoint* - but the truth is that there's a stream of things for everyone to dislike here. That follows from the community being so large and diverse. (There's a longer explanation about this at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23308098 if anyone cares.)
Fortunately most of your posts with this account have been fine, though I ran across some other recent ones that broke the site guidelines and were not ok:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36364904
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36364823
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36283716
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
* I've been trying to persuade users about this for years, though I'm not sure it's worked much: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
