React is winning because its really good. Even if the cost is an extra few milliseconds of render time and few extra hours of dev time figuring out things like hook dependencies.

If React starts taking a backseat, it'll be because its no longer really good. And, to be fair: I've started to see this happen. Next & Vercel have totally taken over the React world, and they've proven to make quite poor architectural decisions. All great empires are destroyed from the inside, not out, and I think its possible Vercel could do this to React. But, also, even as Next seppukus itself, people will likely just fall back to React on Vite (or, there's Remix 3 that's I think still under development, but might end up being big).

+1 React DX is really great. It started really great and it got weird and bloated but it's still really great relative to the JS landscape hell.

But, also yes, it's a pain in the ass and a frustrating kind of necessary evil. So there is room for improvements.

Nextjs is a living hell. The ironic thing is AI makes it dramatically more tolerable to the point it's actually pretty good. But that can't be a good thing in terms of architectural design can it? We're in odd times.

Of course, it's easy to be a hater on the sidelines. I am guilty. Nextjs likely just does too much in it's own made-from-scratch clever way. use-client vs server is just out-of-the gate ridiculous. But then I suppose the real question is "well if you want isomorphic environment, how else are you going to do it?". My answers is "I wouldn't!" but then vercel and the powers that be seem to have won the mindshare of the product crowd. At least for now.

> if the cost is an extra few milliseconds of render time and few extra hours of dev time

That is very optimistic. Most React projects never get to the optimization stage, and end up with seconds of rendering and transition delays that significantly harm UX. And the amount of time spent battling hooks, re-renders, compatibility issues, etc amounts to hundreds of hours over the course of a medium-sized project, thousands for larger companies.

If React implodes because of bad architectural decisions, Vite should fork it.

It's crazy that the best React DX is provided through Vue's community projects.

Remix 3 appears to not be based on React. The React Router/Remix people write great libraries. The problem is that they're constantly chasing the next great library. By the time you use their latest creation, they've already started making a new library that they'll tweet about

My main complaint about React is the sort of lackluster quality of loads of React-adjacent libraries, by people who seem obsessed with "we're doing Yet Another Rewrite and a major version bump".

It's not that hard to maintain API stability folks! Try a bit harder!

Maybe us backenders help. If I need to do front end I learn as little as possible. React does the job. It could have been Angular that ended up being in the boring throne, and I would have said just use Angular. Just use what the world uses!

If react adds extra render time and extra dev time, what is it saving?

Super insightful. I hadn’t been able to articulate the same feelings.

    Even as Next seppukus itself,
    people will likely just fall back 
    to React on Vite…

funny you should mention react on vite - i migrated a web-app to that setup ~3 years ago and never even considered looking back. react is still a trusty workhorse that assists me in getting things done, the ecosystem is rich (i'll take the varying quality as a given for one this size). I've been toying around with next a couple years ago, followed their development for some time, then decided they are not doing what I need. Isometric rendering turns out to sound way better than it actually is. The pain doesn't come from different programming languages on front- and backend, it comes from the difficulty of reconciling client state, server state, security etc. I actually find it helpful to have specialized languages for each side, rather than having to figure out for each piece of code wether its supposed to run on my server or in the browser.

React is popular in the modern days only because, well, it's popular. Developers use it because companies use it, and companies use it because developers use it. It's not popular because it's better than all the alternatives, it's just that it has reached critical mass, and it's now "too big to fail". It takes constant effort to avoid React's many footguns. Supporters often call this a “skill issue,” but even if that’s true, why wouldn’t you prefer a framework that does the same things with less code, faster, and with far less mental overhead?

What is Vercel doing to React? I just know them as a simple hosting solution.

A front end web framework with global state management should be a last resort for a website. Coming out of the gate with it is just ridiculous IMO. Most peoples websites are just not that complex.

There's like an escalation ladder in my mind:

- just write HTML

- statically generate the HTML

- dynamically generate the HTML

- dynamically generate the HTML at a smaller granularity (HTMX et all)

- augment your HTML with custom web components that have client side behaviour.

Only if you've exhausted that should you bother with something like React. And even then SolidJS does a much better job of it than react itself does.

So yeah, I am just not seeing it. Former (and perhaps future!) React.JS dev btw.

Mcdonalds is really good. Even if the cost is an extra few pounds and increased chance of getting cancer.

If Mcdonalds starts taking a backseat, it’ll because its no longer really good. And, to be fair: I’ve started to see this happen. Mcdonalds & Coca-Cola have totally taken over the food industry world, and they’ve proven to make quite poor nutritional decisions. All great empires are destroyed from the inside, not out, and I think its possible Coca cola could do this to Mcdonalds. But also even as Coca-Cola seppukus itself, people will likely just fallback to Mcdonalds on Pepsi (or, there’s Pepsi Zero Sugar that’s I think still under development, but might end up being big).

Maybe I'm stupid, but as I recall, React hooks were quite complicated. It's been a few years since I wrote production front-end code, but it felt like some kind of high IQ/elitist barrier.

Remix v3 isn't react though, the alternative is react router 7

React router have completely bungled their marketing and PR, but they still make the best web framework out there

I'm not sure I'd say that React's DX is actually that great. I've watched C++ developers come over from using QT and the learning curve is massive. Plus almost all the bugs come from dealing with React's renders.

I think React by default is weird because most things don't actually need that degree of reactivity. Like, if most of the time only one thing is displaying or updating a value React just adds a lot of headache. And the amount of useEffect I see? (By necessity mind you) with the need for linters in order to figure out if you missed something in a dependency list.. I just think it's the wrong model for most projects

How is it good? I've only had the misfortune of working on two React apps, but they were both a nightmare. It seems like React is great if you have multiple teams that hate each other all working on the same giant frontend app.

https://medium.com/@fulalas/web-crap-has-taken-control-71c45...

> Even if the cost is an extra few milliseconds of render time

These things are adding up. Web would be much more pleasant without React. There are many better options out there.