Comment by robear | Hacker News Reader

Comment by robear | Hacker News Reader

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I write React but don't look at the docs much so I am not familiar with all the changes there. The basic concepts of React haven't changed much over its history. Hooks are newer than class components, etc but class components still work. Hooks have been out since 2019 so they aren't exactly new (and they were in the old documentation). React itself has been quite backwards compatible.

The Javascript ecosystem tends to have lots of flux with new libraries and ways of doing things coming out all the time. I have found React to be one of the most stable libraries around. I can update versions of React and my code continues to work as before. Libraries that I depend on tend to have more issues with this and version updates can mean changes in the API for the library or a newer version of React not being supported.

My suggestion for someone learning React would be to start with the simplest way of getting started and learn React before learning concepts brought in with frameworks, etc. If I were to start learning React today, I would start with Vite.

In the end it's all state -> view -> interactions -> state -> view -> interactions.

Svelte does it most simply though. I've been doing React for years now, but it still feels ridiculous to me compared to Svelte and others.

I honestly think people who like React have Stockholm syndrome. And everyone is taken hostage since it's the most popular one. UseEffect is ridiculous, hooks in general are ridiculous, mapping over array to create elements is ridiculous, having no tools out of the box for JSX to do simpler if else, for loops, etc. All these bizarre concepts just to hack around JS to make all of it work. And in the end it's all very difficult to read and reason. And all this bizarre boilerplate is just tech debt. It does nothing to describe what is actually going on in that component.

React is a lot better than what came before it (Angular 1, Backbone, jQuery), etc. And I think it's longevity is in large part because it hit the "good enough" where the frameworks ceases to be a major barrier to productivity.

The newer frameworks (Svelte, SolidJS, etc) definitely seem to improve on React. But it will take some time for the wider ecosystem of libraries to catch up (and ideally for one of the newer frameworks to establish themselves as the next-gen "winner)

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