
Why I don't use React - areknawo
https://areknawo.com/why-i-dont-use-react/
======
abledon
""" Yeah, React is popular - almost every web developer knows that. And it's
this fact that makes new project use it. Popularity in the OSS world can be
considered as a guarantee of the stability of the project. But, what if
someone doesn't really want to follow the "hype"? What if they want to be
unique, to stand out? I know it might sound like a joke to some web
developers, but this post as a whole is, as previously said, more
psychological more than rational. """

Bwahahha, ' What if they want to be unique, to stand out?' I am liking this
more as absurdist fiction than an actual analysis of the js landscape.

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scarface74
Did I miss his reasoning for _not_ using React?

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draw_down
It’s popular (apparently too popular) and Facebook is bad.

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duxup
That article is just a wordy sort of high level view of React with almost
nothing about why someone might not use React.

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mixedCase
Content-free article.

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sebazzz
Lot of bold words though, and very distracting.

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K2L8M11N2
The incessant >bolding< of every other >word< is really annoying to >read<.
Please consider using _italics_ , the form of _highlighting_ that doesn't
_jump out of the page at you_.

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tosh
I thought immutable data structures and their identity checks actually are
helpful re performance in react.

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vallas
So you don't like Facebook but you use it, interesting...
([https://www.facebook.com/areknawoblog](https://www.facebook.com/areknawoblog))

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chiefalchemist
"Why I don't use a hammer (when I need a screwdriver)"

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FreeFull
It seems that when uMatrix blocks some of the resources the website expects,
it pegs one of my CPU cores and uses a gradually increasing amount of RAM.

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winningcontinue
I clicked on it b/c it made to the front page and I read the entire article
but I can't understand why he doesn't like to use react.

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ng12
> I personally struggle with embracing immutability. Maybe that's because I'm
> more of a performance guy. Even though I really want to make my code more
> maintainable, and thus I started reading a lot more about FP in recent
> times.

Honestly performance is a non-concern for me. I worked on a React app that ran
on IE9 without any major performance issues and almost no code tuning. It's
not even worth thinking about. However, avoiding immutability for the sake of
maintainability and developer experience is something I would never give up.

~~~
OkGoDoIt
That seems to be a common attitude with front-end devs these days, to the
detriment of web users. The performance impact of React, Angular, any other
heavy frontend SPA framework is immense. Plus the extra weight required to get
back to feature-parity with frameworkless (url rewriting, scroll reworking,
etc). There are some complicated web apps like GMail where an SPA makes sense
(although it's still super slow and heavy), but I've been on so many corporate
teams where there's a big push to move a traditional site to
React/Angualar/etc and it's never worth it. Development productivity is not
worth sacrificing usability, and often developer productivity doesn't actually
improve anyway. But I always seem to be fighting an uphill battle in this
regard. I'm in the process of realigning my career away from full-stack dev
nowadays because the state of frontend dev is so horrendous, I want no part of
it anymore.

~~~
ng12
I honestly don't know what you're talking about. What performance impact? As I
mentioned above I've never encountered a major performance problem in a React
application, even on very old browsers.

Regarding your other concerns I suspect you and I work on very different types
of projects.

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jagtesh
React makes sharing and maintenaning code easier IMO unless it has been over-
engineered in the name of DRY.

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gremlinsinc
I think I'll write my own version of the article. I'll keep it more succinct
though.

I like vue better.

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throwaway66666
I don't know about you, but I don't use react because I don't know how to use
it.

I think it would be more interesting to read about people who know how to use
it, have used it, but now choose not to.

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ng12
> I think it would be more interesting to read about people who know how to
> use it, have used it, but now choose not to.

I suspect you won't find many people in this camp. I know a great many
Angular->React converts, but very, very few lapsed React devs.

~~~
cam-stitt
I'm one of the people in that camp. I loved React, and still think it's a
fantastic tool. A few things that have made me move on:

\- Svelte ([https://svelte.dev](https://svelte.dev))

\- People thinking Redux is brilliant. It's good, but it's a far too complex
system to simply manage state. I'm aware this isn't React, but I have worked
on very few React projects that don't have Redux

\- Run-time load. Back to Svelte. It's inspired me to remove as much run-time
work as possible.

\- API complexity. The React API has exploded over the last year or two.
Hooks, memo, portals, error boundaries. Most of them are clever solutions, but
are only required due to the limitations of React.

~~~
ng12
I though svelte was interesting until I read a recent article where they
introduced that `$:` label. It seemed like a very poorly thought out approach
to me.

That said, I honestly don't think I'll ever go back to using a framework with
templates. My distaste for them has only gotten stronger the more I use React.

> People thinking Redux is brilliant

Redux is good as long as you understand what it's good for and only use it
when it buys you something. My default recommendation is to not use a state
library until you find you need one.

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cam-stitt
Having used a bit of Svelte 3, the label is quite easy to understand. On top
of that, it's valid JS.

> Redux is good as long as you understand what it's good for and only use it
> when it buys you something. My default recommendation is to not use a state
> library until you find you need one.

Agree 100%

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aogaili
Why is this here? the article has no substance and it is poorly reasoned
subjective preference.

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marcrosoft
I expected an article about how the JS environment is out of control and you
should just use HTML. Instead it looks like another call to action to migrate
the JS herd to something more shiny.

I'm hoping we have an anti-JS revolution and go back to HTML-only unless JS is
absolutely-without-a-doubt necessary.

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StreamBright
Waste of time to read.

TL;DR: I do not use React because I choose not to

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atemerev
tl;dr I don’t use React because I don’t like immutability, it gives you bad
performance (spoiler: it doesn’t). Also it’s from Facebook, everybody knows
that Facebook is evil, hence React is evil.

Really?

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TheCoelacanth
Also because I believed the FUD about its patent license. The patent license
only ever granted rights compared to a BSD-licensed project without an
explicit patent license.

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boubiyeah
Wasn't event baited

