| ▲ | afavour 3 days ago |
| Compare React and Preact: https://preactjs.com/ I use Preact often and very, very rarely run into an issue that justifies React being almost 20x the size. |
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| ▲ | PaulHoule 3 days ago | parent | next [-] |
| Is it really React or the stuff it lets you bring in? Many React apps have at least one big widget set (say MUI or reactstrap or …) and then a number of “best of breede” components that do various things. It’s rare for components to be styled with plain CSS these days so you probably have to bring in Emotion and styled-components and Tailwind and …. It is all code that goes into the bundle and it’s a burden on your mind because these are all leaky abstractions and don’t absolve you of understanding CSS. |
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| ▲ | chrisweekly 3 days ago | parent | next [-] | | A someone who's been developing for the web for a living since the late 1990s, I agree that nothing absolves the web developer of the need to understand web fundamentals. But laying blame for bloated SPAs at React's feet is misplaced. With SSR, you can ship React apps that work with JS disabled. And with static extraction (a la vanilla-extract) you can do CSS-in-JS with 0 runtime overhead. Being mindful of bundle size and user-perceived performance is essential. For those that pay attention and leverage the web properly as a platform, amazing performance (and capabilities / UX) with React is achievable. See https://Remix.run. | |
| ▲ | afavour 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Oh I agree. Was just addressing OP’s argument that surely React is as optimised and small as it can possibly be. I’m personally not convinced. |
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| ▲ | MartijnHols 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] |
| If Preact truly was as feature complete as React, it would be used by everyone by now – it's old enough for most teams to be aware of it. The fact that it isn't widely used is case in point. |
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| ▲ | troupo 3 days ago | parent | next [-] | | > If Preact truly was as feature complete as React, it would be used by everyone by now That's a false logical conclusion. Preact (and others, like Svelte and Solid) are not only "as feature complete as React", they don't need some of the features of React (hooks are unnecessary when you have proper reactivity) and they are better at certain features (like SSR). People using or not using them has nothing to do with feature completeness. | | |
| ▲ | MartijnHols 3 days ago | parent [-] | | Fair enough. The quoted statement doesn't hold outside the context of the argument that Preact has feature parity. You can build the same apps with Preact and those others, you just need to sacrifice other things. | | |
| ▲ | troupo 3 days ago | parent [-] | | Again, there's no such thing as "feature parity" because some (many?) of React features are not required by other frameworks. E.g. you don't need React hooks because Preact has signals: https://preactjs.com/guide/v10/signals/ Does this mean that Preact doesn't have feature parity? For a very strict definition, no it doesn't. Does it mean you need to sacrifice anything? No. Same goes for many other frameworks. In modern landscape when it comes to features and abilities React is actually quite a poor offering. |
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| ▲ | afavour 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Not really. Developers are as susceptible to marketing as anyone. React is backed by Facebook. Preact is... not. |
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