Yes, this is probably the wrongest statement. When React was launched, it was one in a pool of thousands of web frameworks. For any axis you want to claim that React won by "default", there was another framework that dominated React in that axis and lost anyways. Some frameworks had more resources and lost (Angular), some of which were more popular and lost (jQuery, Backbone), and some of which were even more hyped than React and lost (remember Meteor?).

React didn't win by default, it won because developers tried it and found it was better. It absolutely won on technical merit.

There's a bit of a question of whether React would still win on technical merit today, versus all the next-generation frameworks. I personally think it is still better than Svelte, Vue, etc, but I'm a bit of a React apologist.

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Izkata 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> some of which were more popular and lost (jQuery, Backbone)

Don't forget about having a migration path. I don't know how common it was (or how messy it might be, I never did this myself), but before Redux became popular, people were using Backbone models as the datastore for React. So existing Backbone-based apps had a way to piecemeal migrate to React.

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rmunn 14 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Upvoted despite your final sentence being incorrect. :-) You're absolutely right that React is miles better than Angular, but Svelte and Vue (which feel very similar to each other, I just switched from one project written in Svelte to a different project written in Vue and a lot of my knowledge is carrying over) are quite a lot easier than React. When I write in React I have to think about the hooks and when I'm initializing them; when I write in Svelte or Vue the $state/ref() systems just work and I don't have to think about them. I can even initialize a $state inside an if block if I need to; I admit I'm no React expert, so I should ask you. If you needed to create a piece of state inside an if block in React, how would you do it? Is the only answer "Move the hook call outside the if block, and just don't use it if the if block doesn't run"?

	▲	machiaweliczny 36 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		That someone can initialize a state in if block is not something good. React won with Angular 1.0 because noobs abused two-way binding making fking mess everywhere. Now in react they abuse useEffect but it’s a bit easier to control. I work currently in Svelte and never use 2-way binding and are careful to package state mgmt well but I like it. It’s similar to react with mobx but more performant although has no good component libraries. SvelteKit is also generally fine

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ipaddr 20 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

It won by marketing and the angularjs to Angular breaking change. If they kept going with angularjs or had an upgrade path react wouldn't be default in the enterprise stack. That's all on Google.

Meteor was node framework. jQuery is probably still more popular but it is only a lib. Vue had a Chinese language problem.

React won because a framework by Facebook felt safe.

	▲	johnfn 20 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		If every other framework failed because of <insert reason here>, that does indeed sound like React won due to its own merits.
	▲	oofbey 20 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Google's incapable of sticking to anything good. Nobody gets promoted at Google maintaining a system. So somebody inevitably gets the idea to make a 2.0 which isn't backwards compatible, enabling them to do all sorts of bold promotion-worthy innovation. And inevitably 2.0 isn't very good. Even worse, it makes the entire ecosystem confusing and unhealthy.