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Comment by tasn | Hacker News Reader

> I keep hearing this but I disagree completely. Does no one remember Angular.js? Backbone? Ember.js? Even my favorite framework, Knockout, had lots of complexity.

You're using a different frame of reference. Those people you're referring to, including gp, probably mean that frameworks add complexity to the frontend. That would include all the ones you listed.

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Okay, so go before that the jQuery (should win the Nobel Peace Prize) used with vanilla JS building absolutely bonkers custom scripts all over the place.

React was a paradigm shift towards more complex frontend apps, but there was still complexity. It replaced a bunch of .erb or mustache or whatever templating that then tried to be interactive with JS layered on.

What React replaced was not less complex overall, though technically I guess it moved more of the functionality to the frontend.

I'll never go back to a pre-React rendering library. Newer ones, sure. jQuery was awesome in its day, but it made beautiful spaghetti.

I don't think people like GP are arguing that there is no place for these frameworks. the argument is that there are too many people just using these frameworks in projects where it may not be needed and blindly running "npm create react-app" or whatever. Then you add something like NextJS on top which makes things even worse.

I would argue that majority of NextJS projects are not needed to be built in NextJS but could do with simpler front end JS.

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