Managing state and syncing it to the DOM manually is much harder than React (or any other big framework) for any non-trivial web app. Reactive, inherently asynchronous, event driven applications get complex easily.

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stevepotter 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Right. I encourage young devs to build a complex app using vanilla js. Feel the pain of two way state management. Then you’ll gain an appreciation for react. And you’ll learn browser APIs and know when react is overkill because it has its own pain

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QuadmasterXLII 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

i’ve tried this, and it almost almost works to just rebuild the Dom on every state change as a pure function of state without any react or anything. The resulting interface is actually way snappier than react – but preserving local state of elements like what text is highlighted, where the cursor is, which radio button is tabbed to etc turns into a nightmare.

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shimman 37 minutes ago | parent [-]

Based on your description it sounds like you were halfway into reimplementing the virtual dom that react uses (or use to use? unsure if they moved away from that with the implementation of a compiler).

	▲	QuadmasterXLII 19 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Yep. The “I’m sick and tired of of X (re-implements X)” cycle haunts me- I think I’m the wrong mix of picky, whiny and industrious

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curtisblaine 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

It's not even the young devs. It looks like most of those complaining are back end developers who "rarely tinker with frontend" but think they can teach everyone else how to make it simple because "it should be static forms".

A great example of all-world-is-a-nail stance mixed with extreme hubris.