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Comment by britch | Hacker News Reader

React is frequently mentioned in the same breath as Angular/Vue/etc. Angular, for example, has most of what you'd want to build a complex web app built. Compared to that, React is not "complete" because if you wanted to build a complex web app you'd need to start using outside libraries or writing a great deal of code yourself.

I agree this does not mean React is "incomplete." It does what it sets out to do very well. But the discussion is often framed as React vs Vue vs Angular, fair or not.

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> because if you wanted to build a complex web app you'd need to start using outside libraries or writing a great deal of code yourself.

This is false. The ambiguity in this comment (“outside libraries”) speaks for itself. Yeah you probably want to use something for routing, but you really don’t have to at all. Otherwise nothing else comes to mind in terms of “libraries”. Just weird that people spread FUD/misinformation like this. so weird.

React is not "batteries included". Angular is.

This isn't a weakness in React. I prefer react's approach. But it does mean the developer needs to make more decisions.

Angular comes with stuff like RxJS and a wrapper around XmlHttpRequest. React doesn't. Again, this isn't "correct," it's just a different approach. No one is being combative here (except you), just descriptive.

I don't like the "batteries included" metaphor because it implies getting batteries is hard. Yes, Angular ships with routing but thanks to the node ecosystem adding react-router is a one-line command. The hard part is learning the routing API which you have to do either way.

"batteries included" means that the software itself has everything you need to get going. It's not that it's hard to get an individual component, but now you're relying on a third party component and potential issues with random configurations etc. It takes some research and effort to figure out that react-router is the best module among the options for routing.

Neither of those are things that are needed for a javascript project. Fetch is a perfectly fine replacement for XmlHttpRequest and is a standard part of JS. RxJS is nice to have, but is not necessary.

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